Tag: driving

Accident updates

I am still pretty hyped up about the whole thing, but there were a few things to calm me down.

First of all, Dmitry offered me a helping hand – he gave me his second car. We drove to the insurance today and added me as a temporary driver for the next month. Thanks a bunch, man! Staying without a car for the holidays would have been pretty tough – now I can finish up holiday preparations.

Secondly, I passed by my insurance and did all the paperwork. The other driver, it seems, haven’t admitted his fault, and so the full round of paper football will take place now. My claim will be faxed to Nicosia, where the insurance agent will gather the reports from the police and from the other party insurance and they will decide who is guilty. Sometime next week they should arrive to the conclusion and inform the garage masters on who will be paying for repairs.

Evacuated the car

I have arranged with my garage to evacuate the car today. We came and spent about 40 minutes trying to put on the transporter. One of the back wheels is pointing to the side and turns the car around a lot. But finally we managed.

I’ve also made a few pictures with my camera phone. You can see them here.

Safer driving with podcasts

I made an interesting observation – listening to podcasts makes me drive safer.

In fact, previously, I was driving safer whenever there was a good show on the radio. I was driving slower because I wanted to listen until the end of the show before I’d get to my destination. I’d pay more attention to the road because I were thinking that radio can disturb my focus. My braind would be more active processing the stuff I was hearing.

But since there just isn’t a great choice of radio stations in my area. And since my reciever can get only on decent station – catching a good show was a rare occasion for me. So rare, that I couldn’t notice the pattern in changes of my driving behaviour.

With podcasts though it became obvious. Podcasts are like a personal radio program. I choose exactly what I want to listen to, and thus every show is interesting for me.

I also noticed that I started to use more features of my mobile phone – my podcast listening device. I installed more new software, learned more ways of the old software, etc. But that’s a total other story, isn’t it…

Surprise can win you a lot of battles

The other time I was issued a fine that I didn’t consider fair. So I wasn’t going to pay it. The thing is, if you don’t pay your fine within the two weeks or so, it goes to court, and than you can either pay more in court or debate the fine. I wasn’t going to turn it into any serious case or anything like that, but I was hoping to debate it and get out of it.

Surprise, they say, can win you a lot of battles. When people are confronted with circumstances there weren’t prepared for, they are easy to manipulate. Especially, if they had a plan that couldn’t be applied anymore to the different circumstances.

That’s what happened to me. Since I was fined way too long ago, I was waiting for a notice from court. Instead I got a phone call. It was from Germasoia police station. The guy in the most polite and kind way reminded that I have a fine due. He said that it was only 15 CYP and that I should pass by and pay it.

I don’t know what got into me, but he was so nice that I didn’t even think twice before picking up my wallet and driving all the way to Germasoia. I paid it and actually felt good about. About two hours later I realized that it was the surprise that caught me offguard…