One-One Thousand, Two-OneThousand...

It's amazing when one of those little things from Driver's Ed you never thought would be important ends up saving your life (and your wallet).

And more than once, at that.

Of course, the gentle reader (I'm being nice here) will ponder which part exactly from that marvelous point in our lives I am referring to. Simple. It's that oft-spoken but rarely remembered "one-car-length" rule, sometimes also referred to as the "one-one thousand" principle. You know, the one that says to ensure a safe driving distance from the car in front of you (or optimum safe braking distance) all you need to so is chant "one-one thousand, two-one thousand" in that order while noting a reference point that the vehicle ahead passes. If I'm not mistaken, if you pass said point before the two count, it means you're way too close and if someone puts on the brakes the chances of you rear ending the person is slightly (very?) high.

Now if the above sounds absolutely foreign to you, don't be too hard on yourselves. I doubt most of us even remember Drivers Ed in Malaysia (unless it's the really pretty girl in jeans and t-shirt whom you'd have loved to say hi to but were too shy and- oops!) and we were all just raring to get into the car and get it over with.

Anyway. On the way back to Perak Saturday morning (about 845 am) I was staggered by the sheer amount of cars on the North-South Expressway. It seemed to me at the time that the whole population of Selangor and KL decided that it was the best time to hightail it up north and to points beyond, turning what would have been a 75 minute journey into one that lasted almost two and a half hours (including the 30 minutes I spent in my hometown stuck behind cars trying the old trunk road). Somewhere after Tanjung Malim traffic picked up again (which essentially means I could drive faster than 60km/h) and though the highway was packed, the traffic was moving rather swiftly. So swiftly in fact, that while I tried to maintain that safe distance (knowing my Kancil's braking distance, it was more to save my own arse) several other cars in front of me were driving really close to one another.

Then the inevitable happened. All of a sudden, 3 cars ahead, someone stepped on their brakes, hard. The resulting occurrence, whilst obeying the laws of physics were quite spectacular. All three cars in front of me crashed into each other with the exception of little old me. I managed to roll to a stop safely, as did most of the cars behind me. As the bewildered and dazed drivers got out of their vehicles, I couldn't help but mouth a silent prayer of thanks. That was scary.

It was scarier because I'd had two similar incidents in the past year alone, one on the LDP and the other on the same highway. Now, I'm not uber-careful or anything, but at that point in time, I thanked God for making me so anal, and for making that bit of info stay in my brain.

Sure, we all hate road hogs. Even I do. But in my opinion at least, there's a difference between being careful, and just being a plain rude hog. The drivers I passed got off with lighter wallets and perhaps a slight headache. Others may not be so lucky.

So in the end I guess it would help us to remember that little adage:

The life you save may be your own.

Have a good week, folks.