Sometimes it’s a good thing to have insurance.
A few weeks ago, I was coming back home on my scooter. My apartment building is part of a complex, and each column of apartments has its own bike/motorbike parking area, with a little pathway leading into it from the parking lot. The parking lot has little roads connecting a few different lots.
As I came in on the parking lot road, a takkyubin (delivery) vehicle was parked there, and as they often do, they left their empty cart blocking the entrance to the bike parking area. I asked the delivery guy, who fortunately was there, inside the truck, to move the cart, while I waited. I was almost in the middle of the road, the back of my bike pointing out.
When they guy came to move the cart, he was careless; he got between myself and the cart, his back to me–and then started backing up right into me. Not wanting to get hit and fallen on by this guy, I used my feet to back up a little bit out of his way (scooters don’t have a “reverse”), while uttering some kind of sound to let him know he was going to back into me. That’s when I heard the pop and scrape.
While I was waiting for the cart to get moved out of the way, a guy and his wife were driving out of the lot. There was barely enough space between the back of my bike and the other side of the road for this guy to get through, only a few inches clearance. Worse, since he was going downhill, he coasted, which meant there was no engine noise to warn me he was there. He did not make any signal that he was about to pass within inches, despite the fact that he could clearly see that I could not see him. He saw everything that was going on and had ultimate control of the situation. I did not have to back up much for my tail luggage rack to hit the side of his car as he passed.
Well, you know people and their cars. In Japan, it can be even worse than America, in fact; people have an almost obsessive-compulsive desire to keep their cars spotless. There are exceptions, of course, but one thing even car-loving Americans tend to be surprised by when they first visit Japan, is that so many of the cars look squeaky-clean and new.
So this guy hears the scrape, stops his car, and jumps out, pissed off as hell. Even in Japan, where people tend to avoid fights and conflicts, if someone feels that you’ve scraped his car, he’ll be ready to jump down your throat. A few years back, I passed a van in a close situation. I know exactly what happened: my muffler scraped the curb, but I know for a fact that I did not touch the van. The owner of the van, having heard a scrape, felt differently. I knew nothing of this until several blocks later, when a man jumped out of his van, leaving it in mid-traffic, strode up to my bike as I waited at a red light, and made a grab for my keys. He later came back and parked nearby when I told him I’d wait. He was pissed as hell, saying I’d scratched his van. I asked him to show me where, and in an ironic twist, this was one of the few people in Japan whose car was full of scratches. He turned to his van and started to point, but soon saw it would be hopeless to identify which one was supposedly the one I had caused. In our pursuant discussion, he said that the scratch was not as important to him as the fact that I did not apologize (though I think that the fact that his van was already in bad shape helped to turn that balance). I explained that I did not scratch his car, I was positive I had not–but he said it made no difference. So just to end the situation, I apologized. They guy nodded in a lordly manner, and left.
That is one way to defuse the situation: apologize profusely. In Japan, that does not necessarily mean a legal admission of fault or guilt, it is often just to grease the wheels. It was the same with the guy I was now dealing with in my building’s parking lot. Had I turned over, shown my belly, and allowed him to growl over me, his dominance assured, things would have gone differently. Unfortunately, my American tendency not to instantly apologize but to stand my ground, this was still strong enough–in addition to the fact that it was not such a clear-cut accident. I have no problem admitting that I should not have backed up without looking. However, there were mitigating circumstances. First, I did not move under motor power–I simply backed up with my feet, and did so to avoid collision, under a split-second choice. Second, it’s not as if I switched gears and backed up while having time to be careful and look both ways–it was a sudden, reflexive avoidance reaction, like ducking back if someone puts their hand too close to your face. And third, his car was to my back and silent–and I still hold that if you decide to pass within inches of people with their backs turned to you, you must accept at least some of the blame yourself.
This guy was having none of that. Even more pissed that I did not immediately humbly apologize for being fully at fault, he became even further enraged when I explained that I was not yet sure that I was 100% to blame. His wife was no help to defusing things, she backed him up and was similarly angry.
Well, we called the police to take a report on the accident, and called the insurance companies. In this kind of a case, despite the mitigating circumstances, I was technically at fault–mostly because my bike was moving backwards, no matter how little or for what reason, and hit his car on the side door, leaving an almost invisible blemish. He had the blemish, and all I had was my story.
You may think I understate when I say the words “almost invisible blemish.” However, I use those words because when the police asked the guy to point out the scratch–they could not find it themselves–the guy came to point it out…but couldn’t find it. Not for several seconds, at least. As it happened, I had already found the scratch a few moments before he tried to, and saw that he started by pointing almost at it… but then his finger wandered away from the scratch, and he had to look really hard in order to finally locate it. That was the extent of the damage. It was so light that at one point, I wanted to try to rub it with my finger to see if it would come off, like a soft paint transfer–but before I could touch it, the guy yelled at me threateningly, telling me not to touch it. The way he was looking at me, I swear he would have gotten physical had I gone ahead and actually touched his car. (Who knows, maybe he was afraid I’d wipe the smudge off and he’d have nothing to stand by; it’s not as if I wasn’t going to pay for it anyway if I made it worse, he already had my insurance info by that time.)
It still rankles me a few weeks later to remember it. I could not prove that he passed within inches, nor could I prove that I only moved back a few inches, even if it would matter (which it probably wouldn’t). The delivery guy had his back turned and so saw nothing. I accept responsibility for not looking before backing up, no matter why I did it, but this guy refused to acknowledge that he might even be in the smallest way also responsible for his silently passing within inches of me when I had my back turned. Instead, he acted like I had just delivered the worst possible insult to his manhood by leaving a near-invisible scar on his automobile and did not immediately prostrate myself and beg forgiveness.
Fortunately, I have insurance for this; I paid about ¥40,000 for two years’ worth of insurance to cover damage to other vehicles and property. When I spoke to the insurance office (someone there speaks English well), they at first suggested that I wait until the damage estimate came in to decide whether or not insurance would pay, as my next insurance payment would go up by $100 if I did. The insurance agent seemed to think that the repair could be done for under that amount, and if so, it would be better just to pay out.
A few days later, I called them back. They told me how much Mr. “My Car Is More Precious Than Life Itself” had the vehicle repaired for.
¥181,461. In U.S. dollars, that $1,493.
For a nearly invisible smudge on his left rear door.
Am I nuts, or could you not replace the entire freaking car door for less than that? It wasn’t a Mercedes or any type of luxury car, just a standard domestic sedan. And in Japan, this kind of repair is usually less than it is in the U.S., at least as far as I have seen and heard before now; parts may be a bit more expensive, but labor is usually much cheaper here.
So naturally, the insurance will catch it, and if I want further extended coverage, I’ll cough up the extra hundred. If people can get away with highway robbery like that and the insurance company agrees to pay, it means that I’d better have the extra coverage just in case something like this happens again.
To be perfectly honest, if it were me, I would not even have cared about such a blemish. Cars get scratches. Deal with it. Live with the shame. Better to have a few scars than constantly be wound up about what might happen to your beautiful faux manhood. My brother and I used to share a car in college; it looked like crap, and we didn’t much care. It’s a thing, and the thing worked just fine. In that car my brother and I had, we got rear-ended several times; each time, the insurance companies pointed out that the car wasn’t worth enough to make a full repair of the severely dented back end, so they just paid off the total cost of the car–something like $700. My brother and I just had a basic un-denting done, and didn’t think about it again. We certainly didn’t get mad or angry or excited about it, nor did we go ballistic when the other driver essentially said, “whoops!” and “here’s my insurance info,” even though we knew the insurance wouldn’t pay to set things back to the way they were before. And heck, my scooter has been scratched on several occasions–some by myself, other times by others–and I barely notice or care. Who really gives a damn? I mean, I love my Mac PowerBook like some people love their cars, but if someone scratched it, I’d say, aw, too bad, and go on with life. I wouldn’t fly into a rage and demand his insurance pay $1000 to replace the casing. If it still worked, that’s what matters.
Now, safety, that’s something else. A few years back, on my old scooter, I was driving across a bridge, in the middle of the single lane of traffic going my direction. Some ass in a car wanted to speed past me. He did not even bother to honk at me, flash his brights, or otherwise indicate he wanted to pass. Instead, he just flew past in a confined roadway while I was still in the middle of the street. I was already going about 10 kph faster than the speed limit, about 60 kph, and this guy was easily doing 70 or more–and as he passed me, his car side-swiped my scooter, throwing me off balance and nearly making me crash. I could hear his car scrape against my bike for what seemed like one or two seconds as he passed me. That must have left quite the scrape on his car… but of course, he did not stop. He sped off.
I was soon able to catch up to him, and honked at him to pull over. I know, it was stupid to, probably, but I was pissed. Not because he might have scratched my precious bike. Rather, because the bastard had come this close to frakking killing me. He dodged down side streets, tried to shake me as I pursued him, honking my horn all the way, hoping to attract a police officer. I busied myself memorizing his license plate (Tama 300, な 81-83, and I don’t give a damn who knows), before he finally got away by going up a ramp to an expressway, which my level of scooter was not allowed to enter. Maybe I should have still followed him and caught him at the toll gate… but then again, the prick had a nationalist hi-no-maru sign in his rear window, so maybe I was better off leaving him go as I did.
Instead, I went to the nearest police station, gave them the license plate number and a description of the car, and filed a report. The police assured me that my name would not be released to the guy; they could not file charges, after all, having no eyewitnesses, but they told me they would visit the guy’s house and give him a talking-to. Despite my lack of faith in Japanese police, I have little reason to believe they did not. Maybe I wound up causing the guy some grief after all–maybe it was a stupid kid driving daddy’s car, and the police visit did him no good. I like to think so, anyway. I also was confident it would not come back to me as the guy did not have my license plate number, nor any idea of who I was or where I lived.
My point? If somebody nearly kills you, getting pissed may be stupid, but at least it’s understandable. If someone barely smudges your car, I can even understand you not accepting what responsibility you had and trying to lay it all on the other guy–you’re protecting your own interests and being defensive, and that’s human nature. Maybe I’m doing that here more than I deserve to–I don’t think so, but it’s possible. And understandable.
But don’t expect me to accept your rage as an equally understandable reaction.