Open the car door carefully!

Last week I went out together with Azman, the production executive of the factory to take a look at the new Alza MPV model. As there were many cars parked along the available space in front of the car show room, and I managed to squeeze in at a corner located at, after a slight bend from the service road. It was a rainy day and the road was muddy. When I got out from the car and opened the door to step out, suddently a motor cyclist carrying his wife and kid zoom passed me from behind and knocked on my door and he almost fell. He was screaming for pain because his eye hit the sharp part of the door and was bleeding. Azman and I quickly went over to check his condition, fortunately only his left eye corner was slightly scratched. And his motorbike plastic front panel and one of the front lights was broken. I had apologized to him and also because of our quick action to comfort him instead of looking at how badly damage my car door was, that had pacified him somehow. Azman was quick to use a tissue to rub off the blood from the side of his eye. And eventually we negotiated and compensated him by spending RM70 for the repair of the motorbike and RM30 for him to see a doctor in the clinic. That settled the whole accident amicably.

This accident had taught me good lesson that I must always be careful to look behind before opening any of the car doors. It is simply too dangerous just to open the door abruptly without watching behind whether there is any oncoming vehicle. In this particular case, it could cause severe injury to the oncoming motorist because the sharp part of the door could pierce his eye if not because of the protection of his helmet that had cushioned off part of the impact. Assuming that if this was not a motorbike but a lorry, one could imagine the entire door might just fly off by the knocking force. Was it not scary?

Another thing we have to remember is that if we are in the wrong, make sure to be humble, apologize and also show your concern to the opposite party instead of to your beloved vehicle.

I thank God for this and also the door of the car only suffered some slight dent and scratched paint work.