Depressing Saturday

It was a very depressing last Saturday for me, considering the fact that I went home that day with my parents so that I could join my old classmates for a reunion dinner.

I looked forward to a wonderful night with old friends and was eager to catch up with some of them, knowing very well that I have not met them for some years already. It did not cross my mind that such an ordinary day would end with such a horrific manner.

It was 6.15 PM when I left home and headed to the railway station to purchase a train ticket for the following day back to Kuala Lumpur. As I had left my Proton car in Kuala Lumpur, I drove the Honda CRV out.

Everything went well and I arrived at the railway station. There, I started to look for a good parking space. I found one about fifty to a hundred metres ahead of me and I turned on my right-hand signal lights. I checked my mirrors to make sure that the coast is clear, and started to execute my turn into the parking space when a motorcycle suddenly just crashed into my driver-side door without a warning whatsoever.

I was shocked, and so was the cyclist. I moved my car aside because if I had just left the car at the spot where the motorcycle crashed into me, I would be obstructing traffic.

I got down of the car and the motorcyclist, a nineteen-year-old boy, accused me immediately for not turning on my signal lights. I refuted him and stated firmly that I turned on my signal lights to turn right for more than five seconds and he would have been looking elsewhere if he had not seen my gigantic signal lights blinking brightly.

I inspected my damages and I was quite terrified by the amount of damage he had done, considering the fact that his motorcycle was fine, with only some minor scratches. He suffered no physical injury (but of course, the impact would have been painful for him). I could only imagine that he was travelling quite fast himself. And the fact that I could not see him at my mirrors would tell me that he was riding at my blind spot and that he was very near my car such that he could not even notice my signal lights!

Calmly, I took down his vehicle registration number and took out my digital camera to snap some photographs of the damages. I telephoned my parents and told them about the crash, in which they turned up at the railway station shortly.

The motorcyclist was very cocky with me, stating fiercely that he had an interview to attend. I gave him a piece of my mind by saying that I had an appointment to keep, too, and that such an incident is not of anyone’s wishes.

While I escaped unhurt, it was also miraculous that the motorcyclist was unhurt. The fact that the body of the CRV wasn’t very hard helped to absorb some of the impact from the crash and actually prolonged the stopping time of the motorcyclist. In other words, the design of the CRV actually saved his life. Had I been driving my father’s old Mercedes Benz and the crash happened, it would have been likely a different story for the motorcyclist.

When my parents arrived they were also shocked to see the amount of damage done by a motorcycle. That nineteen-year-old boy continued to be cocky, in which my father, with the help of my mother, gave him a resounding scolding in public while I was telephoning for the traffic police. Long story cut short, we adjourned to the nearby police station to lodge a police report.

The police report was made and when it came to my turn to submit the report, the sergeant who attended to me nicely told me to collect my report on Monday during office hours. Then I asked him about the motorcyclist and he informed me that the motorcyclist was fined RM300. This meant that I was not at fault. My mother asked some questions on insurance in which he answered them very politely. We were quite surprised to receive such a polite treatment.

In the end, I didn’t go for the reunion dinner. But to make the best out of my trip back to Ipoh, I brought back some important textbooks that I will be needing and also got a new pair of spectacles made. Now, for some pictures of the aftermath of the crash:

Dented right front door, broken right-side mirror, broken right skirting, broken right mudflap. The interiors are in fine condition. Central locking system still working fine.