What to do when someone's car bang into yours from behind?

 

I had been trying hard for the whole morning to come out with an inspiration on what I should post. Suddenly, a huge force pushed me to the front of the vehicle I was driving. It was then I found out I got knock from behind by a car, the force pushed my van and knocked into the lorry in front. Suddenly, an inspiration came to me...

To post a series of articles to help people know more about owning an automobile in Singapore (since most car salesman's words are not really credible). What you need to look out for, and what to do during an emergency.

My incident involved 3 vehicles. My poor friend's van suffered the worst of fate. Stuck between a big lorry in front, and a MPV behind. Not a nice place to have an accident along CTE at 7:10am, peak hour.

GOOD MOVE

I shifted my vehicle to the road shoulder. Ensure the traffic is not affected by this incident.

The lorry driver in front was quick to get off and inspect his vehicle. After inspection, his vehicle did not suffer much damage, and went off.

MISTAKE

I did not take down the vehicle number of the lorry in front and the particulars of the lorry driver. You need all the vehicle number of vehicles and particulars of driver that bang into you to do a proper insurance claim if need be.

Below is the proper procedure taken from Automobile Association of Singapore.

What To Do In Case Of Traffic Accident

With Injuries

• STOP and render aid to victim.

• NOTIFY the Police.

• DON'T remove vehicle unless it is absolutely necessary to extricate victim, or to convey a seriously injured person to hospital and no suitable means of conveyance is at hand.

• REMAIN at the scene if you are not injured.

• NOTE the following:

1. Date / Time of Accident
2. Place of Accident
3. Weather Condition / Visibility
4. Date / Time of Accident
5. Particulars of witnesses: (name / address / phone)
6. Damage to vehicle
7. Particulars of other vehicles: Reg. No. / Make, Driver's Phone No., Insurance Co. / Policy No.
8. Name of Investigating Officer

No Injuries

The present system as envisaged by most of us is that every accident, whether minor, major with or without injury should be reported to the Police within twenty-four hours.

The truth of the matter is that non-injury accidents need not be filed with the police at all, irrespective of how major or minor the accident is, if particulars have been exchanged.

The need has been and remains so that the accident must be reported to the insurance companies involved in insuring the vehicles.

Effective from 1 May 1999, motorists need only lodge a police accident report for 4 categories of motor accident cases:

• injury case
• non-injury case involving a government vehicle or damage to government property
• non-injury case involving a foreign vehicle*
• non-injury case involving a pedestrian or cyclist

* Foreign vehicles are defined as all vehicles registered in another country, all vehicles owned by visiting forces present in Singapore, all vehicles with USN or USG prefixes, and as a general rule, all vehicles insured by an insurance company not registered to transact general insurance business in Singapore.

Definition of Injury Accident
An injury accident is defined as one in which:

• at least one party involved in the accident was conveyed to hospital from the accident scene by an ambulance; or
• if conveyance to hospital was done through other transport, the party is subsequently hospitalised, or given outpatient medical leave* of 3 days or more; or
• where no one was conveyed to hospital from the scene, latent injury had subsequently developed which entailed hospitalisation, or outpatient medical leave of 3 days or more.

Should your accident not fall under any of the above definitions then it is termed a non-injury motor accident and you will need to submit your details to your insurance company.

The insurance company will process the form and submit it to the GIA Records Management Centre.

* Medical leave must be granted by a medical practitioner who has been duly registered under the Medical Registration Act, Chapter 174.

Procedures of The Non-Injury Motor Accident Report Scheme
This new scheme is a simple four-step procedure.

Step 1
Once you have determined that your accident is a non-injury motor accident, you need to contact your insurance company immediately for the Non-Injury Motor Accident Report Form.

Step 2
Fill in the form with the insurance company's guidance or simply do it yourself, it is very easy.

Step 3
Send the completed form in to your insurance company and they will do the rest.

Step 4
You will be informed of the outcome of the claim.

Should further information be required in relation to the processing of your claims, you will be informed.

Should your non-injury accident be reclassified as an injury accident, Traffic Police will initiate investigation and you may be contacted for a police statement to be recorded.

No penalties will be imposed on you should you proceed to file a non-injury report without prior knowledge that the accident is or has been classified as an injury case, or is one requiring a police report.

How do I go about applying for a motor accident report?
You may go to the GIA Records Management Centre (GIARMC) which is located at 48 Amoy Street Singapore 069874. The GIARMC operates from 9.00am to 5.00pm, Mondays to Fridays and 9.00am to 12.00 noon on Saturdays) tel: 63247447/8, fax: 62261280). The completed application form can be submitted to the GIARMC or you could fax it through later. The GIARMC will acknowledge your application and also inform you if the requested motor accident report is in the database. If the motor accident report is available, you can expect to receive it within 7 working days of payment of the charges.

Alright, thank you for coming to my blog, do come often as I will be publishing more article aimed at making your life better. Comments are welcomed and highly encouraged! It will probably take a minute but it will surely make my day. So I thank you in advance and have a nice day!

 

Sincerely,
Guoliang

Lam's Top Eight List of Legal Freeware!

Ok, here is the 8 freewares that are powerful, fast, 100% free and legal! Powerful software that could make your life better and save money. Alright, here is the list... (drum roll...) =) Forget about piracy when you can get things done free.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

Category: Anti-Virus

Pros: Does the job well and does not clog up your system resources.

Cons: You didn't heard of it before, so you might not trust it.

Lam's Comment: Used to believe in Norton Anti-virus. Kind to think of it, you get a anti-virus so that pesky virus won't use up your system resources and slow your system down. So why choose one that slow it down? Plus, AVG is absolutely free. Does not remove and prevent all viruses but does a good job overall. Well, no anti-virus can guarantee 100% prevention. So, why not go for AVG?

• Foxit Reader 2.2

Category: PDF reader and compiler

Pros: Fast, can make PDF file.

Cons: Lacks acrobat's advance features which we don't normally use.

Lam's Comment: Forget about acrobat reader. Foxit reader does the job well in half the time. Even allows you to make PDF files which is a paid feature in Acrobat. Cheers!

• VLC Player

Category: Media Player

Pros: Supports many codecs. Fast loading.

Cons: Hidden repeat, shuffle and playlist features.

Lam's Comments: Plays DVDs, fast loading. Plays incomplete videos (wow), half downloaded bit comet video (much better than bit comet's inbuilt preview mode which does nothing). A very good backup in case your windows media player is giving you trouble. Supports more video type compared to Windows Media Player.

• Super

Category: Media Converter

Pros: Converts many media file types to many file types. (I'm tempted to say ALL media file types)

Cons: Takes 20 frustrating minutes for me to download... (can't find the download button on the website) and 20 minutes to learn how to use it.

Lam's Comment: Take a deep breath!  Super converts 3gp, 3g2, aac, ac3, amr, asf, avi, gif, mmf, mov, mp2, mp3, mp4, mpc, mpg, ogg, swf, flv, vob, wav, wma and wav files inter-exchangeably (Is there such a word?). What does that means? Well, it converts mp3 to wma, so it saves size. wma to mp3 so its more easy to edit. Once used it to convert DVD into VCD and shocked my mum and her friends. Converts a whole 3 gig online video into a 300mb so I can store it in my phone and watch on MRT. Well, still have unexplored features that includes flash file conversions. Super is indeed super. It's free. Only cost is the learning curve.

• Audacity

Category: MP3 editor

Pros: Records sound from your PC's audio output. Advance sound editing feature.

Cons: Need to download lame plugin to encode mp3. Why don't they just bundle them together? Don't worry, lame plugin can be found easily on web.  Yes, the plugin name is "lame". The Lame name is lame, isn't it? =)

Lam's Comment: Good sound editor. Can record sound out of playing movie on the net. Well, get creative! Allows you to cut and splice sounds like DNA, blend them together. Fade in and out, remove audiences' clapping at end of songs. Small size, simple and good.

• Open Office

Category: Office Suite

Pros: Free, Looks like MS Office

Cons: Slow to load? Irritating pre-loader loaded into startup to slow your system down. Luckily it can be disabled  easily unlike qttask (if you know what it is). Lack of bundled templates.

Lam's Comments: The new MS Office 07 had every button jumbled up. Where is the print button? The file button? The stupid jumbling stops me from even doing my basic work! Looks good, but pure useless unless you're born in 2007 or you had high adaptability or you had lots of time to waste figuring out how to use it. Prefers Open Office! Allows office functions. Allows documents to be saved as flash movie! A good way to make flash movie without flash knowledge. Though the transition doesn't work. Well, a good Office Suite for the price of zero.

• Daemon Tools Lite

Category: ISO mounting software

Pros: Fast and light, effective.

Cons: Well, lack of advance features but it really gets the job done.

Lam's Comments: Well, a good ISO mounting software. You can backup your CDs and DVDs into image and load them as if you have the CDs or DVDs in your drive.

• Firefox

Category: Web Browser

Pros: Fast, stable and secure. Tab function so you won't have too many windows opening.

Cons: Some rare sites are displayed differently on firefox.

Lam's Comments: IE7 is a waste of time. Once I thought IE7 could rival firefox. I was wrong. One fine day my IE7 cannot access to the internet suddenly. While firefox could. Well, that speaks for all, firefox is more stable and secure. Maybe just wait for 1 to 2 years then IE can be as stable as firefox. Though I still prefer IE6.

Wow... What a long post. Hope it helps, do give me your comments on how I can improve. Also let all of us know other good freeware by posting on the comments! Thanks for reading! Have a nice day. Fight piracy with good, free software!

Sincerely,
Lam

What Exactly is Sub-Prime Crisis?

 

 
Gloomy day at the Exchange

Many people had heard in the news about the sub-prime crisis in US that had led a global slow down in economy. But, few really knows what it is. I hope to shed some light on this topic with this post in simple English so anyone can understand. Enjoy!

Sub-Prime refers to the credit status of a borrower. For example:

• Mr. A
  • holds a good job
  • has a good credit ratings
  • never defaults on a loan payment
  • always repay his debt on time

He is a sought after borrower if you are a money lender. So you probably wants to lend to him as as he has a good record. Thus he is known as a prime borrower.

• Mr. B
  • does odd jobs, irregular and low income
  • poor credit ratings
  • often delay in paying debts.

He is probably not someone you'll lend money to. As you're not sure if he'll make his payment. So risk is involved. To offset the risk, you charge a higher interest rate. He is known as a sub-prime borrower.

Alright, so how did the crisis start? Few years back, banks and other financial institutes had been lending a lot of money to sub-prime mortgage borrowers, often without proper analysis to see if the borrower can return the money. These institutes then packaged these debts and pass them to other institutes and banks which passes them to consumer as investment like structured deposit, funds and other opportunities.

Everything was looking good until the real estate price starts to drop. The market value of the house becomes less than the mortgage debt of the sub-prime borrowers (negative equity). Many sub-prime borrowers are unable to pay up for the debt resulting in foreclosures. This reduces the prices of real estate even more, which causes a vicious cycle to continue as lower prices leads to more foreclosures and lower prices.

The result...

Cartoon showing all who are affected in the crisis.

Sub-prime borrower lost their houses, some went into bankruptcy.

Investors (Banks and Public Investors in stocks and funds) lost money and confidence. Certain stock prices of heavily hit companies fall by 90%! Many switched their investments to more secure mode like bonds and commodities.

So this, in short, is the Sub-prime Crisis.

Hope you find this post helpful for you. Do e-mail me or post your comments if you have anything to add or improve. Air your views on this crisis! Thanks for reading. Have a great day!

Sincerely,
Lam

New Beginning...

 

Sunrise signifying a new beginning for this blog.

Hi all, thanks for viewing my blog. After a failed attempt of trying to create a blog on year ago, I'm starting this new blog. Hopefully it will last longer. =)

In this blog I'll be posting anything that I think will be of benefit to you.

So, do give me your comments, constructive, destructive, anything. Cos seeing participation will get me going! Ha ha.. I plan to make this a online portal where people can feel free to air their views. Thanks all for your support!! =)

Sincerely,
Lam