What to do after a car hits your garage door

Make it safe before anything else

Unplug the opener or pull its plug from the ceiling outlet, and do not press the button again. An opener will keep pulling on a door that is twisted or off its track, and that can drop the door or bend it further.

Keep people, pets and cars out from under and in front of the door. A door that has been hit may still be attached to a loaded spring while sitting partly out of its track, which means nothing is guiding it.

What to look for, from a distance

Look for rollers sitting outside the track, a cable hanging loose, a gap at one bottom corner, a section bowed inward, and a vertical track bent at bumper height. Any one of those means the door should not move until it has been checked. The off-track repair page explains why.

If the door still looks straight and runs, watch it through one slow cycle by hand with the opener disconnected. A catch, a scrape or a jump at the same spot each time points to a bent track or a damaged roller.

Take photos for insurance

Photograph the door from outside and inside, close-ups of any bent track, cracked sections and loose cables, and the car's damage too. Do this before anything is moved or repaired.

Whether the repair is covered depends on your auto and homeowner's policies, so ask your agent. We can give you a written description of the damage and the repair to go with your claim.

What usually gets damaged

The bottom section takes most bumper hits, along with the vertical tracks at bumper height, the rollers in that part of the track, and sometimes the bottom brackets where the cables attach. A car pulling out under a half-open door can bend the top section or the opener arm instead. The panel replacement page explains how one section is swapped.

Hidden damage matters too: a hit can loosen the track brackets or crack the jamb behind the track, which shows up later as a door that binds.

Repair or replace after an impact

Cost Insight Hub's 2026 guide puts single-section replacement at $500 to $1,200 and an off-track or roller fix at $180 to $450. If one section is damaged and the maker still makes it, replacing that section is usually the best value.

If two or more sections are bent, the model is discontinued, or the door was already old, a new door can make more sense. The repair or replace guide walks through that decision.

If the car is still inside

Do not try to force a damaged door open to get a car out. Call and tell us a car is trapped; we can usually free it by securing the door and working around the damage, then finish the repair once parts arrive. The emergency repair page covers how that works.

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