The Accident

OK, lets be frank now. How many of you use your mobile phone when driving? Or rather, hands up, those who did not use their mobile phone when driving. Yeah, I guessed as much. Compared to everyone I know, I am always on the Field. In other words, most of the time, I would be driving, climbing ladders or talking to customers when my phone rings. With the CallerID on the phone, I know who is calling and I can also choose to ignore the calls. As much as I am tempted to, I really want to ignore all the calls until its convenient for me. But its not easy to ignore friends and/or families when they call.

Oh, don't even remind me about Bluetooth headsets and handsfree kits. I go through them about four or five units a year.

So, let me tell you about today when a friend called this afternoon. A very simple call, I picked it up, looked at the screen and then my tech said, "Look out!". The phone fell from my hands and bumped about in the car. You can start to guess what had happened. Let me tell you what would happen:

A fender bender would have happened. And with the car going at 80Km/h, the car would generate enough energy to ram into the first car which then distributes the remaining energy on to the second car. Then we would all have to come out and take down all particulars before the vultures would swoop. This means we would have minutes, at most. And I would have to call my Insurance Agent because I do not have AAM anymore. And I would need to sort out all the crap and still keep calm at the site. It would be very hard to SMS that friend because my hands would be shaking with anger due to my stupidity. And also at the busy bodies who would be stopping their cars to have a look see on both sides of the road. Because this would have happened in PJ, we would have to make the Police Report at Jalan Barat's Police Station. This would make me lose the precious hours there. And customers would call about missed appointments.

Obviously, I would not be that stupid to write on the report that, "I caused the accident because I was using a mobile phone."

No, I would have to start like this, "At about 12:47 on 29th of September, 2009, I was driving a Silver 2001 Hyundai Elantra on the Federal Highway license plate register XXX XXXX when suddenly, a White car license plate register YYY YYYY suddenly made an emergency stop. As I could not stop in time, I had no choice but to hit into the car in front. The impact was so great, it made the front car hit the second car in the front. . . . . Bla Bla Bla"

And then, I would have to waste more time to get the car's photograph taken and even more time to get the Investigating Officer (if he is available) . Not only that, I would have to tell my Boss the whole thing and because its a Company car, the Company would be affected as well. Knowing my Boss's temper this morning, I would have to suffer his temper again, something which I am not looking forward to because I know the relationship is already strained because of this stupid act of answering the mobile phone. And there is a very high chance I would be dismissed.

Then I would have to sort it out with the Insurance agent and this would take a lot of time as well. And then, with no other mode of transportation, I would have to borrow money to repair my Satria so that it can be driven. Which is a bit difficult because the late salary's already gone in less than a week.

And now, I know I would be in deeper and deeper trouble as this would be only the beginning. I would still need to go back to the Police Station, get the report and pay the fine and so on since no one would be injured during the accident.

So, that would be what would have happened. Instead, I picked up the phone, my tech said, "Lookout!" and I just threw the phone on his lap and braked in time.