Spared and grateful on Christmas Eve

Two images would haunt my mem­o­ries for a long time.

It was 8.30pm on Christ­mas Eve, dark, and the sky was pour­ing every­thing it had on us speed­ing along the Melacca-Seremban stretch of the PLUS high­way. I was rush­ing back to KL in a Toy­ota Avanza packed with 9 of my rel­a­tives for a meet up with my friends for the countdown.

Some­where along the typ­i­cal high­way mess of cars, trucks and buses rush­ing past us in the heavy down­pour in the midst of hazy sprays of rain­wa­ter, the bright brak­ing lights of a red car came into view as I looked out my left. But it was no ordi­nary pass­ing car, for the lights were close, too dan­ger­ously close, and we were in the third lane.

In a sud­den impulse to avoid the sway­ing of our Avanza to the red car on the left, my cousin, who was the dri­ver counter-steered to the right — a lit­tle too hard. I would never for­get what I saw next as the car jerked vio­lently to the right.

In a heart­beat, the high­way divider came into view with our car’s head­lights illu­mi­nat­ing it as we headed straight for it at 90km/h. There was no whole-life-flash-past-me nor light-at-the-end-the-tunnel thingy but I remem­ber brac­ing for impact and thought, rather cliché-ly, ‘I’m gonna freakin die’.

Then wham. The impact came as we jerked vio­lently again to the left. It felt as though the whole car bounced off the divider, slam­ming both front and rear sides. Every­thing hap­pened so fast, before I realised the car was slow­ing into the emer­gency lane. My next fear was that speed­ing cars, or worst trucks, would slam us from behind, but sur­pris­ingly the traf­fic slowed down behind us as my cousin shak­ingly steered the car pass three lanes into the emer­gency lane.

God were we saved.

With all of us scared till white and shak­ing out of utter ter­ror, my cousin cried out of relief at the wheel. We did not spare any time to get down to check the dam­age for every­one knows even the emer­gency lane isn’t safe, espe­cially at night. Within min­utes, my cousin got back on the road. And about 30 min­utes later, we reached Serem­ban safely with much relief.

The dam­age was much less than expected. I had pic­tured much worse when we were still in the car but appar­ently, it turned out to be only dents.

The result of the ini­tial impact into the divider, in which my aunt in the co-driver seat reached out to counter-steer the other way. Which was one of the rea­sons why we didn’t slam head first into the divider. But that life-saving manœu­vre caused the car to sort of bounce off the divider and slam its right rear on it before my cousin steered clear of the divider.

In short, we sort of bumped into the divider twice at 90km/h, once in the front and another in the rear. And mirac­u­lously, if you inspect the two pic­tures above, none of the doors suf­fered damage.

The dam­age would look like any typ­i­cal road col­li­sion. But what made that inci­dent that har­row­ing was the fact that it all hap­pened at high speeds on a wet, slip­pery high­way, in a mer­ci­less storm at night.

Two images would haunt my mem­o­ries for a long time. One was the dan­ger­ously close brak­ing lights of the red car, fol­lowed by the image of the high­way divider being illu­mi­nated by the car’s head­lights right before the impact.

God we were saved.

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Orig­i­nal post:
I met a freak­ing acci­dent at the Melacca — Serem­ban high­way last night on Christ­mas Eve.

I only have God to thank on the fact that I’m still able to type this now.

More on this later when I have the time. Mean­while, Merry Christ­mas to all!