There were some less busy roads off Jalan Bkt Bintang which I took every single morning. I never had any problems. This morning was another story. I had a near miss. A what could have been a terrible incident that will mar my life to a certain extent if not for a life time. It was at a cross road. The bike didn’t stop at the stop sign. Luckily I was not that fast neither I was too slow driving. As I jammed by brake pedal hard in a sudden reflex action and the car stopped and I could feel the tyres dragged, and hoped against hopes that I could stop in time. By the time the car halted, I was just missing the bike maybe an inch that I could see the terror in the man’s face. He was right in front, so close, his eyes closed tight and face grimaced in such a way expecting some disaster to happen to him maybe death. And me, I didn’t even think whether there’s a car behind who will bumped into my car due to the sudden stop. Luckily the road was not busy and the car behind was too far and managed to stop.
The incredible thing was the biker started again, raised his hand to me as a sorry or thank sign and moved on. I could feel the relieve coming from him, maybe grateful for his life. As for me, I was so relieved too but stayed stunned there a minute unable to move, feeling white from the near miss and the what could have beens.
I could have hit the guy. He could have been hurt or died. Or I could have been hit from behind and get hurt myself. I really don’t want to be involved in any of those and have never had that kind of mishaps (God forbids) through out my driving experience.
Which reminds me of an accident happened to my sister when her daughter was only 5 months old and was in the car front seat. Her car was just a car passing through on the way for dinner with family and got hit by a car which was spinning out of control due to a drunk driver. The driver and the passenger in the car died, and this tells the extent of the accident. My sister at the time who was also 3 months pregnant was hospitalized and I cried for days for my niece who had head injuries and broken bones and had to go through multiple operations at one private hospital and we thanked God that she finally recovered. She was only 5 months old and now is a healthy 4+ year old.
Malaysian people are nice, polite to neighbours as well as friends. However I guess Malaysians are impatience and somehow when they want to go anywhere, they fail to plan the journey but they want to get there first. They feel good if they could outsmart other drivers and save a minute here and a minute there. They buy expensive cars but hate staying in the cars too long therefore will jump queue and if possible other drivers should stay away from their lanes because they hate to slow down.
It takes only two impatience drivers to do the same mistakes at the same time at the same place for an accident to occur. The probably of it happening is quite high, I would say.
