A brush with the dark side

Friday November 13, 2009

COMMENT By P. GUNASEGARAM

THE last time I met with a serious accident was more than 20 years ago. Things have not changed much since then.
I don’t consider myself fortunate that I accepted an offer from a tout, although it immediately made things easy.

A taxi driver (arranged by the tout for free) took me home and waited while I had dinner before taking me to the police station to make a report.
The tout’s workshop arranged to have the car towed, repaired and for the paperwork to be done.

Nice, everything was taken care of. But the problem started later. The insurance adjustor’s report stated that some parts were to be replaced but the workshop did not do that.

Then started a series of procedures before the workshop rectified the problem, with bodywork already beginning to rust before the rectification. I never knew whether the workshop did all the other things right, but I knew I was never going to use a tout again.

Earlier this week, I received a call – someone close had an accident. He, a college student, was OK but shaken.

The car had skidded as he braked to avoid an obstacle. His car went over the divider and landed disabled, with front tyres flat, chassis damaged and engine oil leaking, facing oncoming traffic.

In half an hour I had reached the town outside Kuala Lumpur on the North-South Expressway where the accident took place. His teacher, who was passing by, stood beside him by the side of the road, reassuring him.

There were no policemen in sight. But tow truck touts had reached the scene minutes after the accident.

They had repeatedly hassled the driver. One of the touts had asked him to sign a blank form so that – he said - the car can be moved to the side of the road. But nothing had been done.

He now waved the form and said that it meant that we had accepted his services. I pointed out to him repeatedly that we had not, and asked him repeatedly to say what it would cost to tow the car to a workshop of my choice in Kuala Lumpur.

He refused to answer. He was adamant that we sent the car to his workshop.

He said the towing charges would be free if we did so and that he had the capacity to repair the car. Seeing that I was not prepared to accede to that and that I was determined we go to a workshop of our choice, he became threatening.

The big deal for him was of course the insurance claim. Workshops often inflate insurance claims, cut corners in terms of doing the job, and pocket thousands of ringgit routinely from each accident case. They pay the touts well.

Thousands of motor accidents take place in Malaysia every year, and the amount of claims yearly are in the billions of ringgit – insurance statistics indicate that it could be as high as RM4bil for 2008.

Back to our tout. He was becoming positively obnoxious, and freely threatening not just bodily harm but murder. He could kill, he said.

He was working himself into a frenzy, he was pacing up and down, he was shouting. There were some people behind him who seemed to be his allies.

By this time the teacher who had stopped to help feared for our safety. She suggested we should leave. She called the college for help.

In the meantime, one of the group told her that if we paid the tout RM100 he would go away. She said she was sorry she was asking me to do this, but she was beginning to fear for the safety of all of us given the way he was behaving.

That tout may have been acting, he may have been intimidating deliberately and appearing to lose his temper so that he could get some money. But given the circumstances, we preferred not to take chances.

I handed over RM100 – the light was fast fading, but it was daylight robbery and extortion, pure and simple, done in full view of a small crowd.

Shortly after – more than two hours after the accident occurred on a busy road, with the car facing oncoming traffic and the two-lane road on that side reduced to one – three policemen arrived.

I told them about what happened. They listened and then just stuck to directing traffic.

The tow truck operator I had called through the Automobile Association of Malaysia (AAM) arrived. Efficiently, he loaded the car “single-handedly” onto the truck with a winch. And we were on our way to our workshop.

The charge was RM87 for a distance of 87kms, starting from where he had set off to come to the accident scene. I gave him a generous tip.

My question is, why are these tow truck/workshop touts being allowed to threaten us so blatantly and use false pretences to force their services upon us? How come they seem to enjoy such a cosy relationship with the authorities so much so that no one takes any action against them?

Some of my friends recounted horror stories where groups threatened them and forced them to use their services. Shaken up by accidents, and sometimes injured by them, unsuspecting accident victims are further bled by these unscrupulous, cruel people often right under the noses of policemen.

Those involved in accidents have to take precautions in the absence of action from the authorities. First call the police, then the tow truck operator of your choice who will take the vehicle to the workshop of your choice.

Becoming an AAM member helps considerably because they have a panel of tow truck operators with standardised charges and they have their own, more reliable workshops.

Tough as it is, refuse any help from tow truck touts politely but firmly.
Enlist the help of the police as soon as the accident happens, especially if the vehicle cannot be moved. Have emergency numbers for AAM, police stations etc ready.

But try as we might, we often have no choice but to succumb to the increasingly threatening stance, forceful tactics and downright illegal moves that these touts take. They are no longer mere nuisances – they have become a major menace to law and order.

It is high time the authorities crushed them once for all. All it takes is for the police to come to a scene of an accident quickly and simply take charge – which includes protection from touts.

Managing editor P Gunasegaram is grateful that no physical harm came to anyone that day from this sinister brush with the dark side – but he still smarts from the affront and the injustice of it all.