Collision Repair on the Danforth

The ramp at Bloor and the merge at Wynford

The Danforth ends at the viaduct, and the viaduct is where the trouble starts. Westbound drivers peel off onto the parkway ramp at Bloor, a short curve that drops into the northbound lanes with little room to match speed, and a car that hesitates at the bottom is hit by the one behind it that did not. Further up, where Don Mills Road meets the parkway at Wynford, the entry is faster and the merge does the same thing at a higher speed. Southbound in the evening the parkway stacks up from the Bloor exit back past Don Mills Road, and the stop-and-go there produces the neighbourhood’s most common claim: a rear-end at walking pace that looks like nothing and is not.

Inside the neighbourhood the hits are slower and messier. Danforth and Pape is a wide signalled intersection with a bus terminal on one corner and turning traffic on every phase, and a left made on a stale yellow meets a car going straight. Broadview and Danforth at the top of the viaduct is the same thing on a bigger scale. These are corner hits: fender, door, wheel, and usually more behind them.

The first hour, before the shop

If anyone is hurt, call 911 from where the cars stopped and wait for police. If nobody is, and the two cars together look likely to pass the provincial reporting threshold, the report goes to the nearest Collision Reporting Centre, and it should go the same day. Take the other driver’s name, plate and insurance company, and photograph both cars where they stopped. Then call your own insurance company within the week — under Ontario’s DCPD rule it is your own company that pays for your car when someone else caused the crash, in whole or in part, and fault is split under the Fault Determination Rules rather than argued at the curb. The exception is a driver who signed the OPCF 49 endorsement; it removes DCPD along with Collision or Upset and All Perils, so no collision damage is covered whoever caused it, and the endorsement also gives up any recovery from the other driver. Comprehensive is all that can remain. Worth knowing before anything is booked.

Send us the photos the same day. The written estimate comes back the same business day, and when the adjuster asks which shop, the answer is yours to give: Ontario drivers choose their own repair shop, whatever list is read out. Say Crash Consultant at Sheppard and Don Mills, and from then on the conversation is between the owner and the adjuster.

What the repair involves once the car is here

A photo estimate is a starting point. The real one is written after the bumper cover is off, the headlight is out and the fender liner is on the floor, because that is where a Bloor ramp rear-end hides its cost: a crushed foam absorber, a reinforcement bar bowed a centimetre, a radiator support pushed back, a parking sensor knocked out of its cup. Our estimator photographs all of it and sends the pictures with the revised estimate, so the supplement is agreed before work begins rather than discovered halfway through. If the hit reached a rail or an apron, the car goes on the measuring bench first and the printout goes in your file.

Wherever the damage touches a crash structure, an airbag sensor or a pretensioner, we ask your insurance company for OEM parts and put the reason in writing. Bumpers with radar or sensors behind them get a note that recalibration may be required once the cover is back on. The panels are refinished and blended into their neighbours, and the rental, if your coverage includes one, runs from the day you drop the car at Sheppard and Don Mills until it is done. If the car cannot make the run up Pape safely, we help arrange the tow, and you choose where it goes.

• Teardown photographed before the estimate is final
• OEM requested wherever the structure or a safety part is involved
• Recalibration flagged when radar or sensors were disturbed