Backed up

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

Local car body shops have not exactly turned into little body shops of horror this season, but they are so backed-up with work from the overwhelming winter that some of them are simply booked until well into the spring.

"For driveable cars, the next open spot is on May 5th," said Linda Bouchard at the Ile Perrault Chevrolet body shop, which has found itself dealing with a lot more customers this year since a nearby body shop closed down and several drivers, from Dorval all the way to Vaudreuil, have started seeing them instead.

"I'm booking for the last week of April," said Jim Ring, who runs Auto Magik in Dorval.

Bouchard said she did not see any particularly horrible accidents this year, but the sheer volume of people needing help for minor mishaps is simply unprecedented. "The population in general was not ready for a winter like this," she said.

Likewise, Ring's shop has not been picking up particularly badly damaged cars, but he said Auto Magik specializes in repairing minor scraps anyway. According to him, most body shops would have probably been expecting a busy spring due to bad winter. "I’m not going to get this fixed now" must have been the prevailing attitude for customers who damaged their cars in the dead of winter, said Ring. As snowstorms kept piling up, most drivers preferred to wait for winter to truly end, which is why body shops are so busy right now.

"Many people do not change their habits in the winter compared to the summer," Bouchard explained. A few tips can go a long way toward avoiding trouble, according to her. Going a little slower than usual on snowy or icy days, leaving more distance between yourself and the next driver, and hitting the brakes a little faster are some of the things people can do. Bouchard said her manager, Robert Pelletier, has been equally dumbfounded to see so many people come this winter, despite years of experience in the industry.

For Ring, who only opened Auto Magik five years ago, the abundance of customers this spring is both due to the particularly rough winter and the fact that his business is still growing.

As for next winter, Bouchard praised the mandatory winter tires law passed by the Quebec National Assembly that will come into effect November 2008. "I think it's a good thing," she said, but cautioned that at the end of the day, only careful driving would make a real difference. "If you get black ice on the road and you're going 140," she said, "it's not going to stop accidents from happening."