Alvin’s Weblog

On a fateful, 28th October 2008, Tuesday night, my friend’s parents were both involved in a tragic accident. It came so sudden and so tragically that nobody could or would have seen this coming. What was supposed to be a farewell dinner for the couple before they flew overseas, ended up as a fatal accident.

It hurts and pains me to see this happening. I have long suspected our drivers to be so inefficient that I was sure one day, they were going to kill someone. It happened for real this time. I tried many times, to view it from the perspective of the young driver. I tried giving him all the benefits of the doubt but there just aren’t any benefits I can find. Many times, I tried driving a constant 80km/h and slammed on the brakes approximately 100m from the junction, and I could still stop in time without the ABS kicking in.

This led me to the fact that he was definitely driving very much faster to not be able to stop in time and cause such a damage. I reckon he was driving at least 120km/h but it could be more or less, I don’t know. Being a probationary driver and killing 2 people in an accident will definitely haunt him for the rest of his life.

I have many things to say about him but I shall refrain as I do not wanna speculate. He knows best about what happened that night. This leads me to the question, is it too young for our drivers here to be driving at the age of 17? Honestly, I don’t think it’s too young, but the problem is with the mentality of the people here. How our system operates here is to blame as well.

Because of the mentality of the people here, I honestly think an age of 21 years old would be more suitable. Putting up the “P” sticker does not mean anything anymore. It is meant as an indication to other drivers that we are noobs and are still learning. Nowadays, it is more an indication of professional driving. You see drivers with P stickers driving at crazy speeds, zig zagging through busy roads.

They are so professional that a 850cc car can be driven as fast and as aggressively as a 5000cc Ferrari! I can list down many types of road idiots right now, but I think that itself deserves an entire post to itself. I’ll make it a note to blog about it in the near future.

Youngsters nowadays seriously have to consider undergoing crash course safe driving. Driving schools should buckle up and get serious about what they are doing. Do not pass students for the sake of passing them. The end product will end up harming other road users. You’d be surprised how many actually do not know what certain road signs mean!