From A to B

I used to nag a lot at Iceman’s driving – don’t brake so late, don’t reverse so fast, signal before you turn, etc.  Thankfully, Iceman didn’t complain about my nagging and I eventually found myself sounding very irritating so I stopped.  I also figured that like what happened to me, one will learn to drive more gently after a few knocks to the car. 

I had my fair share of knocks during my first year of driving.  My dad’s poor old Audi A6 suffered a bad scratch across the front left bumper and 2 knocks from me parking the car at I can’t remember which carpark now.  I also suffered a few near misses on the AYE (nearly kissed the backside of the car in front) and that sure taught me to not tailgate!  Since then, I’ve driven 2 of my dad’s Volkswagen Passats (past & present car), my own Nissan Sunny and our current Latio & Kia Rio and there hasn’t been one incident in the last 9 years to boot!  I thus concluded that if Iceman’s handling of the car were really as risky as I felt it was, a couple of knocks to the Latio would rectify it.

We’ve owned the Latio for close to a year now and I’m happy to share that it’s been kept in a relatively pristine condition.  Iceman has taken over as the regular driver of the Latio since our wedding last Aug and apart from scratching the metal part of the wheel (the axle?) from parking too close to the kerb and reversing into our first floor neighbour’s laundry stand (albeit no damage sustained), there have been no other incidents – till today.  We went to Margaret Drive for dinner and Iceman parked the car front in.  I was waiting by the pavement while Iceman adjusted the car to be properly within the lot when I suddenly saw the car sort of surge forward a little too quickly.  The front bumper of the car knocked into the kerb and plant holder close to it, and sustained some scratches (not that serious).

I was pretty ok about it but Iceman was quite upset (he takes very good car of the car – vacuuming it, taking it for regular polishing, etc).  He said he didn’t understand how it happened ‘cos he didn’t step on the accelerator and the car sort of just sped forward.  He later said he could have been distracted by the car next to him but I guess everything happened too quickly to be absolutely certain.  In any case, I asked Iceman during dinner if it might help if he parked a little slower.  Iceman, however, said that this incident was an anomaly and so changing his driving / parking style would not help.  He reiterated that the passenger will always feel that the driver is driving too fast ‘cos the passenger is unaware of the driver’s intentions, i.e. when he intends to brake, turn, etc.  I suppose Iceman has a point though I thought my clean driving / parking track record also lends some weight to my theory about toning down the speed.

Whatever the case, a car, to me, is just a vehicle to get you from point A to point B.  As long as the driver and passengers are safe, what’s a couple of knocks right?

2 Responses to “From A to B”


  1. 1 Iceman

    You are right. I was and still am upset with myself, should have been more careful. In hindsight it’s always easy to say all this. I guess I just want to look after our things and not take them for granted as it didn’t come along easily. However, I’m trying not to be obsessive about them either as after all we can’t bring them along with us at the end.

  2. 2 kelvin

    Haha, the last sentence seems like an excuse. But really the most important thing is to be safe:)

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