bumper-to-bumper

bumper to bumper

Very close together. Typically said of traffic that is moving very slowly or not at all. The cars on the highway are bumper to bumper right now—there's no way we'll get there on time.
See also: bumper
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

bumper-to-bumper

1 very close together, as cars in a traffic jam. 2 (chiefly of an insurance policy) comprehensive; all-inclusive.
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • bumper
  • bumper to bumper
  • nose to tail
  • up on (one's) bumper
  • up on someone’s bumper
  • bumper sticker
  • fanny-bumper
  • 26+6=1
  • plus
  • equal
References in periodicals archive
"We are excited to add Pacific Best, Inc, one of Southern California's leading suppliers of bumper-to-bumper collision and cooling product needs, as the latest client for WAC Business Technologies.
All products built in Korea will benefit from a five-year unlimited mileage warranty and those built in Slovakia get even better coverage - a fully transferable seven-year bumper-to-bumper warranty..
MOTORISTS buying a second-hand car from next month could have it covered with a bumper-to-bumper guarantee until the year 2016.
Most of the bumper-to-bumper is on an eightlane highway so if you just look at the seven lanes I'm not in, that means I pass something like a new car every 40 feet per lane.
Dear Editor, Such is the prodigious waste of our precious oil reserves from bumper-to-bumper car commuters who snarl up our roads, such is the reality of catastrophic climate change worsened by rush-hour, carbon-spewing, thoughtless motorists, that, something must be done.
This means it is able to brake the car to a standstill behind the vehicle ahead, which Audi views as a great benefit in traffic jams and bumper-to-bumper traffic since it also can keep the Q7 rolling at crawling speeds without intervention.
After bumper-to-bumper traffic and rows upon rows of humongous buildings in Shanghai it was a relief to see vast fields of green and yellow (canola, we were told).
Last night marked the start of a long holiday weekend in Spain and the roads where those filling stations are located had been bumper-to-bumper with traffic.
On any given night on the streets of the heavily lesbian Chicago neighborhood of Andersonville, the cars are parked bumper-to-bumper. A disproportionate number are Subarus--Foresters and Outbacks tagged with rainbow decals, pink triangles, and bumper stickers promoting choice, peace, and vegetarianism.
The same sleek machines that offered us the freedom and romance of the open road have brought us the nightmares of two-hour commutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic, road rage, smog, global warming, wars for oil, and the extinction of half the planet's species.
This pick-up is only 9 feet bumper-to-bumper, and 5 feet wide.
Their go-slow protest drive brought buses to a halt and caused bumper-to-bumper chaos for several hours.
The impact durations ranged from 0.090 to 0.124 seconds for these bumper-to-bumper impacts and tended to decrease with increasing impact severity over the range of speeds tested.
Truck and Bus Drivers, 38 percent said their top cause of headaches is bumper-to-bumper traffic, followed by bad weather (31 percent).
The worst congested highways in the country were in Los Angeles, California, where residents in 1999 spent an average of 56 hours a year crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic.