On the night of the 17th September 2008, at around 12:10am in Hua Hin, Thailand, I was driving home alone in my 2007 Honda Jazz, cruising along the main road at around 60 kph. The roads were quite empty, though there were people eating at the food stalls on either side of the street.

As I approached the town centre, a couple of motorcycles from the other side of the street suddenly cut in front of me to drive down one of the side streets on my side of the road. I had to brake suddenly and I became pretty cautious. Stupid drivers like this are quite common over here in Thailand, especially at night.

I drove on, picking up a little speed from when I slowed down to avoid a crash with the 2 stupid kids on motorbikes. The road was clear apart from a few vehicles on the other side of the road. There was a motorbike approaching from the opposite direction, on the other side of the road. He was in the middle lane of a 3 lane road. As he got closer, I realised he was driving at quite a fast speed, and seemed to lack control of his driving. Suddenly, as he came closer, he quickly turned to my direction, as if he just remembered he needed to drive into a side street on my side of the road, though he seemed to not have seen me. Either he must have been blind not to have seen a car so close, or he wanted to hit me.

Due to his short distance from me, and the speed he was going, I couldn't react quick enough to get out of his way, though I tried and steered to the right, as he approached my left side. He was too quick and hit me almost head on to the passenger side of my car. The windshield smashed into pieces, the airbags flew open, and my car switched off. Smoke started filling the inside of the car, and at the time I panicked, thinking there was a fire or something. I got out of the car quickly and tried to get my thoughts together.

There must have been around 50 people who were standing around me as I exited my vehicle, mostly people who were eating nearby, or passing by. As they approached me I started to worry, thinking they would blame me for hitting this motorbike. I quickly glanced over to the other side of the road to see where he was. His bike lay on the pavement about 15 metres from my car, slightly infront of my position, and he lay around 20 metres from my car, behind my position. He must've flown at least 20 metres from his motorbike. He died instantly.

One lady from the crowd came to me, and as I feared for her to be aggressive to me, she spoke clearly and calmly and said, "Don't worry, I saw everything. He hit you, it wasn't your fault". I felt some relief, though I knew already that I did nothing wrong. She then went on to explain to me and others around, who also agreed, that the driver of the motorbike was "wasted" and was driving across all 3 lanes from the bar he was drinking at earlier. These people were driving behind him and were scared to overtake as he might hit them. Apparently, they were at the place he was drowning his sorrows in, and was drinking himself almost to death because he discovered his wife was cheating on him. Sad.

The police came promptly, and the road was cleaned up. My car was towed away and his remains were taken to hospital. I wasn't charged for anything, though we had to pay a small "sympathy" fine to the family of the man because he died, even though it was completely his fault.

My car was in the garage for 3 months, and when I got it back I was very happy. My girlfriend was a little scared at first because she's slightly superstitious and thought his ghost might haunt whoever is in the car, lol.

I just thought I would share this story with anyone who's interested. It happened a couple of years ago but it made quite an impact on my life.

Below are some pictures of the accident:

Me and the insurance guy


Front view of my car and tow truck


It happened outside a gas station


Side view of the damage


My car in the garage (the hole in the windshield is where his face hit)








The bike in the middle is what he was driving


Close up of my windshield




Here, you can see some of his hair which must have got caught when the glass shattered



Below is my representation of what happened that night of how we hit and the angle he came at me


I hope I didn't offend anybody in any way putting up pictures like this, if I did I'm sorry! I just want to give the message to you all........ DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE!!!

 

sadly you can't stop people from destroying themselves especially when drugs an alcohol are involved. Thanks for sharing. glad you were free from injury and legal issues.

 

that's very uncool that he just found out his wife was cheating. it makes it seem so much more likely to have been on purpose, which if it was is so not right to have put you through. you got a new fit, right??

 

wow, its usually a drunk person in a car hitting a motorcyclist.. glad you're okay atleast.

 

I can't believe that they actually fixed the car! Here in the states that car would be beyond totalled. Glad you came out of it OK...

 

My thought too. As tragic as his death may be, I am glad that he did not hurt or kill anyone else that night.

 

thank you for sharing your story, i am glad you are ok, and that the man did not hurt anyone. sorry you had to go through i can only imagine how hard it was for you. thank you again for sharing

 

thanks for the replies guys. i did have a little legal issue in the beginning. since i live in Thailand, the police are very corrupt and when it comes to car vs. motorbike, they tend to be extremely biased towards the motorbike driver; they think people who drive motorbikes don't have money, but people with cars do, therefore the person who drives a car should pay the motorbike driver. sad but true. in my case, the policeman said i could equally be at fault because we hit eachother :| he was clearly drunk but they didn't check his blood alcohol levels, and when we asked him why he didn't check, he simply replied it was because his blood had dried up. so it was obvious he was trying to make it look like i was at fault. in the end we had to pay the police about $300 and the family of the deceased around $750 for "sympathy". if we didn't then the police would've made more of a big deal out of it. oh well, this is thailand :S

my car was repaired at a garage recommended by our insurance and took them about 3 months to complete. the cost of the repair was about $9000 which was covered by the insurance.

thankfully i came out ok, no injuries or whatever, though i usually drive my little sister or my girlfriend around, and i'm thinking if they were in the passenger seat, not only would they have been traumatised, but the impact of the glass could've cut there faces/eyes surely? if that was the case i would've been furious that he took his sadness out on me! but if it wasn't me then it could've been somebody else, perhaps a guy and his kid on their motorbike. then there might've been more deaths. it's tragic but this kinda thing is pretty common over here. i can tell u one thing for sure, i drive a lot more carefully now!!