An accident

My son drives a new Proton Saga which was bought 1 year ago for his college going from the house so as to save my wife the hassle of sending both him and my daughter to school.

The intrinsic value of buying a car for him serves multiple purposes. In my mind is that he should be trained and learns how to drive safely as early as possible. And he must shoulder the responsibility to fetch the sister and the mother to places while I am not close at home. The parents will feel more at ease if our son and daughter could gather the experience of driving a vehicle well and safely by virtue of their number of years of experience being on the road.

I had driven car before when I was younger and therefore could understand that certain skill of driving could not be taught or told, but only through experience that one could drive better. A lot of people could drive well in the sense that not hitting on some other people's vehicle, but the higher level of skillful driving demands a driver to anticipate and to avoid your vehicle being hit by other drivers proactively! My wife is one example, and she could drive really well, even she could handle a Rusa van without any difficulty!

I rode a scrambler motorbike during my varsity days and thought it was a brilliant idea to beat the traffic light was to start the acceleration and release the clutch when the light turns yellow. Thinking that by the time the bike moves out to its full speed, the traffic light would have turned green and stayed ahead of the other riders. Little did I realize that other drivers from the opposite side of the traffic light would think the same by beating the traffic light while the red light just turns red. How dangerous it could be, to assume and to rationalize our supposedly a smart move by theory! Now I told my son that do not trust even the signal light of the oncoming vehicles because sometimes the drivers simply forget to switch off their turning signals! I repeated this many times and he probably thought I was just long winded!

Yesterday my son and wife phoned me about an accident involving the car. To me, since it was called accident, nobody wanted it to happen. It is fairly common for us when we were young to get our cars dented here and there because we are all here to learn. Only through years of driving then such frequency of bumping into other vehicles or getting hit by others could be reduced.

My son really treasures his car and he cleans and wipes it almost everyday. And I could understand the heartache of getting his car hit. But in my mind, one must drive a used car first, get enough driving experience then only attempt on buying a new car. Anyway it was a good lesson to learn from a minor accident. When they called me for the advice, I told them that in such a case, firstly is to find out how much it costs to repair the damage in the workshop, if it costs not more than RM500, calculating the loss in NCB (No Claim Bonus) for insurance, the hassle of getting the police report etc, just compensate the other party if you are in the wrong and settle the case. It is simple mathematics!

Finally the repair cost is RM280 and that of my son's car is RM80. To me, the valuable lesson learned by him is worth more than the amount!

Happy driving son! Just drive safely!