[On4Wheels]

Great patience. The minimum time period for acquiring decent proficiency for any skill is just 20 hours. It can vary from person to person and if somebody could achieve that in first 40 hours, then he/she should introspect whether to continue the training or not.

[priyankarb]

Originally Posted by W16rocks

I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint, mistakes happen and I believe the OP handled it well by supporting the lady, and helping her regain confidence, if we stop people from driving after every small incident, most of the drivers on the road, wouldn’t be driving.

What we can do is, help them learn the right way to do it, the situation is best handled when both parties can learn something valuable.

Absolutely concur to your views @W16rocks! The lady must have learnt an expensive lesson and hopefully turns out to be a fine driver here onwards. While this is an emotional dent to the OP more than monetary, he has definitely displayed the right social behavior and taken an accident in the spirit of one. To the OP: You set a great example mate and I hope, guys at OCD get your car back to its former glory.

Cheers,
Priyankar

[krishnakumar]

Originally Posted by VaibhaoT

Regarding Women's day reference, I feel in our society is there is unconscious bias, when it comes to women driver. For example, few days back, our cab driver was not getting enough space while overtaking, he quickly said she must be a lady and when the driver in next car was actually a lady, he grinned like "told you so".

I absolutely agree with you on this. Our society is consciously biased to begin with, let alone unconsciously biased. Sigh. It is deeply rooted in our society, we see it everywhere!

And I firmly believe everyone of us should be inclusive and challenge dogmas and stereotypes when we see/hear them. Only then as a society we will improve. That’s a discussion for some other time! Maybe another thread.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I couldn’t care less about the gender of the said driver. I think all genders are equally culpable in where we are as a “traffic culture” if I may liberally use.

Driving is such an amazing skill to master. I actually believe that the more one masters the skill, the more likely one is to not break rules, drive safely and efficiently!

Originally Posted by W16rocks

if we stop people from driving after every small incident, most of the drivers on the road, wouldn’t be driving.

I don’t think the sentiment here is that such mistakes are unforgivable. If we start to do that, then yes nobody will drive on roads.

The concern is that this was a very basic situation which they couldn’t get out of unsupervised. They of course have to go back learn and improve! However, they should not drive anywhere unsupervised with such level of skills. And this is very much a big reason why our traffic is like this today!

[vjbox]

Originally Posted by zandot

Is there anything behind her that's preventing her from reversing further into the gap in front of your Bimmer? Perhaps something we can't see in the camera angle? The amount of back and forth made me think for a second the video was stuck on a loop as the repeated reversing and forward didn't seem to get any better

Sorry this happened to your GT!

I wondered this too when watching the video and thought the OP edited the video in a funny way. She seemed to go forward and backward in the same path for a while and didn't quite course correct the car for a cleaner U turn. I suppose she is an amateur driver ?

[HighRevving]

Originally Posted by W16rocks

I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint, mistakes happen and I believe the OP handled it well by supporting the lady, and helping her regain confidence, if we stop people from driving after every small incident, most of the drivers on the road, wouldn’t be driving.

Sure, we can agree to disagree. I am only saying that if it is an unavoidable circumstance, it us understandable to make mistakes; I have made mistakes and I assume you have too. Not when it is totally avoidable and as much as possible, not at someone else's cost.

Someone who does not know how to drive has to get professional help, to an extent where they do not crash into someone or something, at the least. The next step would be to take someone along who is proficient in driving. Only when the proficient person thinks the learner is good enough, should the learner even attempt a driving test and a license. Until then, it is dangerous to get them on the road. The lady in question here should ideally learn to drive in a safe environment and not in a BMW museum or an expressway. Yes, we need to encourage people even when they make mistakes but the mistakes cannot be at someone else's cost - if this woman had learnt driving on the road and hit her car against a divider or a pole, I wouldn't mind it but she should not be damaging someone else's car in the name of learning.

Originally Posted by W16rocks

What we can do is, help them learn the right way to do it, the situation is best handled when both parties can learn something valuable.

I don't like dents and scratches on my car even if the other person is willing to compensate me more than what it costs to fix them. So likewise, I respectfully disagree with your view that I should subject my car to damage because someone else has to learn driving. I don't think the person who has done nothing wrong has anything valuable to learn when their car is damaged.

[Captain Slow]

Real glad things ended well and that your car is safe.

In Our Wonderfull Apartment they refuse to show us the CCTV footage even if damage happens to your car/property!

Run by a bunch of Hippies!

[Deeps]

Originally Posted by Guna

Ideally she should use her insurance to claim 'own damage' and 'third party damage'.

From what I know, to claim "3rd party damage" from her insurance, it has to be proved in court that she was responsible for the damage. Not sure if there is a way to voluntarily declare 3rd party damage.

[Gaur]

My old driving license (book type) had a line printed on it.
"Driving is a privilege not a birth right" but what we see in our country is exactly opposite.

if this message is strongly drilled in our minds i feel it will make our roads/parking a better place.

[Mat095]

Nice to see a quick resolution on the problem.

Just a suggestion, is it possible for you to exchange parking spots with the Celerio lady, it looks like the Celerio is parked in a corner spot and if you could ask the nice lady to trade parking spots with you then I feel your Beemer would be a lot safer neatly tucked in the corner from all the other vehicles too as you said it’s a relatively smaller parking than the general length.

Also, the Beemer looks smashing in that Nardo Grey!

[Turrrb0]

Driving fairly well like a few other things, you either have it or you don't. Operating a car can be learnt but proper spatial awareness and driving sense, I don't think so.

[sentra26]

A bit late to this post and as others have mentioned she definitely needs to take more driving lessons.

The area looks like it could be frequented by kids - running or cycling around. Her lack of spatial awareness (her 3 attempts to reverse actually led her to increase the turning radius of a tiny car because of tipping the wrong way) might lead to accidents not only on the road but inside your apartment complex as well. At the minimum she needs to install parking sensors in her car and a rear view camera. The best would be a 360 camera (overkill for a tiny car but this could potentially avoid any big issues later).This is something you must suggest to her.

[RMN]

Curious to know if PPF can be added to our insurance add-ons as an accessory? That way one can claim insurance in case of a damage.

[Rachet]

Originally Posted by RMN

Curious to know if PPF can be added to our insurance add-ons as an accessory? That way one can claim insurance in case of a damage.

It is not included for now. Any damage to it , you have to shell out from your pocket.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Rachet

It had been couple of days since she had bought the car and came to know that she is going for driving classes.

This was something I was terrified about when my son started to learn driving. There are many high-end cars in my building parking lot, and they are usually long and their nose is poking well out of their slot.

So I never let him drive alone for a long time. Finally when he did cause an accident, it was on the road. He turned left without giving signal, and a biker trying to pass from the left crashed to the ground. No harm done, just some scratches on the bike. Made my son pay 3.5K to that driver for the repairs, against the workshop bills.

By looking at the reversing video, it is clear that she didn't know which side the wheels should be turned. She was not really ready for solo driving. That was her real mistake. If she had an experienced driver in the passenger seat, she/he would have corrected her right away.

[supermax]

Originally Posted by sumeethaldankar

18k is a bit too steep for the lady to pay don't you think considering she is a humble Maruti owner. I would have helped her out a bit by asking to pay say half the amount after all she did owe up her mistake. I am not saying she should not pay at all and that you should bear all the cost all yourself but in the end we are all humans and we tend to make mistakes.

One doesn't get a DL faster or slower because one has a Maruti. Fines for breaking traffic rules are also not dependent on what car one is driving, right? Why then should she not be presented the bill for damages she's caused herself? Driving is not a right, but a privilege, and it comes with a lot of responsibility. If she's not learned to operate a car safely, she shouldn't be operating it. If she causes damages while operating it, she's definitely liable for the full extent of the damages she causes.

Originally Posted by Turbanator

Sorry state of affairs on issuing Driving Licenses. She should get herself enrolled in a driving school. Absolutely not fit to drive on road given the way she is trying to take out the car in a parking lot.

Commendable patience by OP

Absolutely. Looking at the video, it was shocking that anybody could keep doing and redoing the same operation, while expecting a different outcome somehow, as if by magic. She seems to have no understanding about what needs to be done. In the end, the fact that she didn't even stop before crashing into the car seems most alarming. What if it was a sleeping animal like a cow, which is all too common in India? Would she have the focus and concentration to observe and navigate around children playing on a street? The nonchalance with which she strikes the car is enough to send a chill running down the spine.