An Investigative Report On The Bumper Scraping Epidemic

By Daniel Lawhorne

A spectre is haunting Campus — the spectre of bumper-scraping.

Except, not really.

Are you familiar with this spot on campus?

Probably. It’s not hard to find. It’s right next to the PAC.

If you’ve paid much attention to this spot, or have ever driven over it, odds are you’ve noticed that a lot of cars scrape their bumpers as they drive out of the parking lot of Main Hall. Having grown up in Buena Vista and starting at SVU when I was seventeen, I’ve witnessed more than a handful of crunchy exits. All of this got me wondering: how often do cars actually scrape their bumpers here?

After sitting here for a cumulative two hours, I gathered a sample of twenty cars that drove down this path (and honestly, I was surprised by how few cars drove over it in those two hours). Even more surprising, however, was that only 20% — or four out of twenty — of these cars scraped their bumpers. I also noticed a pattern of cars turning to the right scraping less frequently than cars that turned to the left, which is evidenced in the photo by the gouges in the pavement, which are much more pronounced and in greater number on the left side.

If you are as surprised by this statistic as I was, go ahead — give it a try yourself. I don’t really see why you would, but hey, whatever floats your bumper.