Shattered Front Windscreen on my Honda Civic FD2

It was a quiet, peaceful evening on Christmas Day. We were on our year-end family vacation to the Royal Belum National Park, Gerik (haha, some people hear I'm going to Greece, so I have to slow down and articulate whenever I mention this it). Pulling out of the Belum Rainforest Resort (a wonderful stay, more on this in a separate post), we headed towards the East side of Pulau Banding to look for some affordable dinner at the Jetty area just before the Temenggor Lake Bridge. No sooner than I cleared the Resort main guardhouse, unfortunately I heard a sharp "KRAK" sound in front.... 😱

I've heard it before - the sound of a stone hitting the windscreen. I believe it came from the oncoming 4x4, as there was no vehicle in front of my car. Though I was moving quite slow at the time, the stone had quite a bit of kinetic energy as the 4x4 sped past. I scanned my screen for signs of damage, but did not see anything. Somewhat relieved, we had our dinner and made it back to the resort uneventfully.

The next morning, my wife exclaimed as she noticed a crack line extending upwards from below the wiper on the driver side to middle of the windscreen. Hmm, looks like we weren't so lucky after all - what an unpleasant "Christmas Present".... 😓

It was a clean crack and thankfully, the glass did not shatter - the V-Kool tinting held things together. Well, nothing more I could do about it. We finished our holiday and made it back to Melaka the following day. Over the weekend, I noted that the crack line had grown longer, inching upwards to towards the top, and a secondary shorter crack had appeared. Will call up David, our trusty "car repair man" to get my poor Honda Civic FD2 fixed up - have to check if this is covered by the motor insurance policy. For the tinting, lessons learned - V-Kool is great, but tends to block signals (my gate remote and SmartTAG always seem to have problems transmitting out of the cabin). Anyway that tint layer was done more than 10 years ago, will check again what is the best option available these days. Any recommendations, anyone?

From this experience, first a reminder - do not follow / tail-gate vehicles, especially if the roads are rocky, and you know, those trucks which carry rocks and a lot of loose stuff. Even without the risk of hitting some flying object, you could find yourself rear-ending the vehicle in front in event of sudden braking. As for the risk of shrapnel coming from oncoming vehicles, I can't really think of any evasive maneuvers - the road was only a single lane in each direction, and the oncoming vehicle was speeding. However, what I can say is that you need to be prepared for such unexpected events and not get a shock and lose control of your vehicle. That's actually much easier said than done, so my advice is:-

(Stock footage taken from the internet)

• Keep both hands on the steering wheel. Except when changing gears. Since 99% of cars these days are automatics, there's no excuse for not doing so. In the event you get a shock, with both hands it is less likely to jerk the wheel in one direction. If you need to use one hand for something (legal, like changing the radio and not talking on the cellphone), do so when the coast is clear (ie, no cars close by, going in a straight line). If needed, slow down or stop by the side of the road.
• Don't have a death-grip on your steering wheel. You just need to hold it to keep the car pointed in the right direction. Again, if you clench until your knuckles are white, you may jerk the wheel if you get a shock and lose control of the car in the process.
• Slow down - sudden steering changes at high speeds equals instability, more so if you are driving a RWD or something with high COG (Center Of Gravity) like a truck or SUV.
• If you see a large, fast vehicle approaching from the front, try to keep to the far side of the road (if there is only a single lane, do your best and watch out for motorcycles coming from behind).
• Lastly, if you are driving on rocky roads, don't drive so fast. Not only do you risk skidding if you roll over rocks or stones, but your tires may pick up and toss stone and damage someone's vehicle (like mine!).

Come to think of it, there is a high risk of getting hit by flying stuff from speeding vehicles, so try to avoid being exposed out in the open on highways (pity the police guys who selflessly man the speed camera, aren't they happy now they are replaced by AES? 😅).

(Pic taken from somewhere on the internet - hope owner doesn't mind)

Sitting down in the living room thinking to myself out loud, with all the automotive innovation these days, rather than work on something far-fetched and unrealistic like a flying car (really, see here), hopefully some engineer can design a working force field generator (like the one in Star Wars), which would be off most of the time (to save power, maximize fuel economy, of course), but when needed can be turned on. Oh, would be nice if it were programmable, so I could "divert all power to forward deflector shields" in situations like the above. Far-fetched you say? Maybe, but at least more practical than a flying car. Who knows? Innovation and inventions begin with a though, and problem looking for a solution - space flight and moon landings were science fiction once....

Side note : since I was think out aloud, my son asked me why not enlarge it to form a planetary shield, in case of incoming asteroids and meteors? Haha, even wilder imagination than me - that's my boy! 😂

Well, to all readers out there, hope 2019 was a good year for you and that 2020 will be even better. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Hati-hati di Jalan Raya!