Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Car Accidents (车祸)


Many people think that car accidents are caused by negligence. Once I was involved in a car accident and the police officer told me that in Penang island alone, about 100 cases of major and minor accidents involving all sorts of vehicles happened every day. That was about 15 years ago. The number might have risen due to more vehicles on the road these days. Furthermore, road construction works are carried out everywhere and errant parking on already narrow roads; coupled with impatient drivers made our Penang roads relatively deadly for road users.

Have you ever wondered why road accidents always happen on a roll? For me, if one minor accident hit me; then further mishaps would cease until next cycle. If I escaped one accident, then a second would entail and the third and the fourth. Normally, if three consecutive incidents were avoided, then I would be safe for the year… I am not superstitious, but I do feel that there were ‘something’ to get me into those troubles…

Let’s turn our attention to Karen, who is an actress used to star in many Hong Kong movies. Sometime ago, Karen participated in a paranormal show where she was required to conjure ghosts in a warehouse using some traditional method. The program did record down some inexplicable phenomena.

It was around 1am when the filming activity ended. As usual, Karen drove her car fetching another new actress, Jess with her. Just as when Karen was to stepped on the brake paddle to switch to reverse gear, she somehow accidentally stepped onto the accelerator paddle causing her car to rush forward and rammed onto a brick wall. This impact caused her front bumper to dent and somehow dislodged on the right side. Both ladies screamed out panicked.

Everyone on the scene rushed to their aids. Luckily none of the ladies were hurt and the car bumper was later temporarily fastened by a piece of steel wire by filming crews. Everyone thought that was just an accident perhaps due to tiredness. So, Karen restarted her car again, bided the crews good night and drove away.

As Karen drove on, both of the ladies chatted to drive away the boredom of night driving while keeping each other awoke; suddenly the car came to a police roadblock. An officer approached the car waved his hand indicated to Karen to stop her car. Karen wound down her side window and looked at the officer.

The officer said: “Mam, your headlights are not working, so is your brake light… Please remember to replace them tomorrow. Good night!”

Karen thought that was odd, she just had her car fully inspected by the manufacturer last week. But she thanked the police officer and drove on.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Now Karen’s car came to a sharp corner and as she was negotiating the corner, Karen suddenly found her steering wheel jammed. Instead of turning anti-clockwise according to the curvature of the road, the steering wheel was locked and the car turned towards clockwise direction, which was a deep ravine. Panicked, Karen’s sweat flowed down her forehead; luckily Jess noticed something was wrong. And, both of the ladies tried as hard as they could to turn the steering wheel anti-clockwise.

In a split of a second, the steering wheel was miraculously turned towards the anti-clockwise direction and the car skidded, and its left side smashed against the granite wall and the car finally halted by wedging in a drain between the wall and the road.

Again, both ladies escaped unharmed. Karen immediately called for help and both of the ladies were sent to hospital for further check-ups.

According to Karen, she couldn’t raise enough courage to look at her car; which she later described that she if it was not the car number plate, she couldn’t believe that the scrap iron in front of her was her beloved car!

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