Wednesday, September 17, 2008

My near death experience

It all started when KH invited me for his officer commissioning parade, so me and 6 other guys went to attend it at OCS. The trip there was fairly uneventful and after braving a light drizzle, we finally got to see KH on the parade square. Wow, he looked totally different, his face is now sharp and angular from losing all his excess weight and he looked damn smart in his No.1.

We left to have a quite pathetic dinner at OCS as well, initially the plan was to meet Adrian straight so that he could pass us the wedding dinner invitations but somehow Enz and Jing went into the buffet area so we followed suit and started eating.

Took the shuttle bus back to the parking lots. Jing, JS and Chao left in 1 car. Enz, TCS, Keng and me took the other. Somehow along the trip, Enz seemed to be quite distracted and drove fast, fast enough for me to bio the speedo and for TCS to make noise. We also overtook Chao's car which isn't the norm cos Chao typically drives quite fast. Later on, they zoomed by us anyway.

Jing also felt weird that we overtook their car as Enz is normally a safe driver and generally we wouldn't expect him to go above 100kph. My last bio at his speedo was slightly over 100kph. As we went on, Enz overtook this lorry or some vehicle from the left. (Overtaking should always be from the right) Keng reminded Enz that we needed to keep right to get onto PIE. Somehow this comment simply didn't register in Enz head so he kinda just continued going faster. It was only when Keng reminded him a second time, when the road was gonna split, that he finally realised that he was on the wrong route!

At this time, I suppose he was a bit anxious and wanted to get onto the right path so he started to change lane without checking his blindspot. Our car inched closer and closer towards the taxi on the right. I managed to shout out be careful in chinese. Bam! We hit the Prime taxi and it felt like we were really done for.. We started going sideways ala Initial D except we're on the fucking expressway..

As we were turning right at the point of hitting the taxi's front left bumper, essentially the taxi nudged us sideways and our nose is now heading straight for the center divider. Enz hits the brakes and I can see him just grabbing on to the steering wheel. With the center of mass transferred to the bonnet, the tail of the car is now free to slide out even more. None of us are shouting, we're just bracing ourselves for that sinking feeling of not knowing what we're gonna hit or what's gonna hit us..

2nd impact: BAM! Hit a Mitsubishi Grandis on its rear quarter. The impact takes off some speed from our car and .. BAM! We hit the center divider on our right side. (I'm seated on the right, behind the driver)
After that Enz managed to bring the car to a halt with its nose facing the road shoulder.

I was so bloody disoriented I looked out the window and was simply unable to figure out which side I'm on and is it safe to get out of the car or not. Ran over to check the Grandis driver (apparently his car spinned 4 or 5 times without hitting anything) and he was very dazed. The poor Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan was driving his boss' car home and was innocently knocked by our car.

In the end, everybody was OK except for the car which sustained quite some bad damages to the bonnet area..

Lessons learnt:
Don't speed.
Always signal/check blindspot before changing lane.
Never change lanes aggressively. (Taxi didn't even have time to horn)
If its too late, just take the wrong route.
Never overtake when in convoy.
Always put your seatbelt on. (I was belted up, TCS wasn't)

PS: Enz if you somehow read this, I'm not mad at you or anything. I'm glad we're all ok and that matters the most.

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