A scene for fleeing

The buttheadguy effect, part 2

When the motorcycle struck my taxi at high speed, shattering the driver-side window and shearing off the side mirror, I initially didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was there was a terrible thud and I was suddenly being showered with broken glass.

Then I saw the black-clad motorcyclist tumbling in the street, his unmanned bike scraping to a halt on its side.

A strange, quiet stillness descended. The rider lay motionless, sprawled face-down on the asphalt next to his bike.

My driver glowered at me, as if all this were my fault. I shakily paid my fare—50 Philippine pesos, about $1.35 Canadian—and got out of the cab.

The rider was still unconscious, a pool of dark red blood forming around his head. Fortunately he was wearing a helmet, but from the looks of it, his face had been smashed in. A crowd of onlookers milled about with worried looks on their faces, doing nothing to help the injured man.

Still numbed by the shock of the crash, I blinked, and blinked again, and realized there was a particle of glass in my right eye.

And I thought seriously about getting the hell out of there.

Freeze frame. Cue title sequence:

THE BUTTHEADGUY EFFECT
Peril and bloodshed that transpired in 2009 because Chris D broke Glen Callender’s front tooth in 1984
PART 2: A SCENE FOR FLEEING

Action continues:

Now, if I had been in Canada, the idea of fleeing the scene would never have crossed my mind. In fact, I’d have been happy to give a statement to the inevitable police officer and get checked out by the inevitable paramedic. And someone’s insurance would have paid for any treatment to my eye.

But I was in Manila, and things are different there. Cops are notoriously corrupt. An ambulance might never come. And the only person at the scene with any kind of insurance was probably me.

When I was backpacking in nearby Thailand, an expat told me that if I, a white-skinned farang, were even peripherally involved in a car accident—such as being a passenger in a vehicle that got hit by another vehicle, or being a mere bystander who simply witnessed the accident—I should flee the scene immediately. If I didn’t, my relative wealth would all but guarantee that I’d be shaken down for bribes by the injured parties, the police, and anyone else who could make my life difficult.

Given that the Philippines is at least as poor and corrupt as Thailand, I had good reason to suspect that things could turn out just as badly if I didn’t put some distance between myself and this bloody situation. But since I didn’t know for sure, I texted a Filipino friend...

Motorbike hit my cab. Cab damaged, rider injured and unconscious. Should I run away now?

…and waited anxiously for a response that would never come, as my friend was asleep at the time. And so I stood there in the bright morning sun, my irritated eye reflexively blinking, my instincts screaming at me to run.

Three or four minutes had passed since the crash, and still nobody was helping the injured motorcyclist. People milled, and it was clear that a good percentage of their staring and murmuring was about me. My anxiety was off the scale.

Then the cyclist woke up, and only then did the bystanders move in to help him. They got him up on his feet—he definitely had a broken arm and shoulder—bundled him into a jeepney and drove off, another man following on the damaged bike.

A moment later, the cab driver jumped into his car and took off. There had been no communication of any kind between the cabbie and the motorcyclist. I guess there wasn’t any point. Without a word, or even eye contact, these two hapless fellows simply cut their losses and went their separate ways.

Well, I certainly had an answer to the fleeing question now. At this point, I was the only one who hadn’t fled. Clearly, fleeing was the enlightened thing to do. So I turned to flee...

...and realized that I really couldn’t. Because, as luck would have it, the collision had occurred at the end of my cab ride, just seconds from the office of the dentist I was going to see. An office that afforded me no cover, as the dentist was late for work and the place was still shuttered.

Alas, fleeing the scene of the accident would necessarily mean fleeing my destination as well. Fuck. And so I reluctantly put my fleeing on hold, instead opting to stand around outside the dentist’s office like an extremely conspicuous white tourist who’d just been involved in a nasty road accident only a few metres away, and hope the damn dentist would show up and get me out of sight before the wrong people arrived.

Then, right on cue, a police car approached. Shit.

Slowly, deliberately, the cops rolled by the lingering bystanders, the blood, and the broken glass, and... didn’t stop.

The car had just disappeared from view when the dentist pulled up on his motorcycle and opened his office, allowing me to finally—and at this point, extremely undramatically—flee the scene of the only road accident I’ve ever been involved in. A gruesome spectacle that would never have occurred if not for the dentally detrimental misdeeds of a certain depraved someone, so many years ago....

Crane shot. Glen disappears into the dentist’s office and the camera rises up above the rooftops to close on an ominous panorama of the smoggy Manila skyline. Cue baritone-voiced announcer:

"So ends another chapter in a sordid tome of human misery that would never have been written, had not Chris D broken Glen Callender’s front tooth in 1984. Tune in again next week, when it will be Glen’s turn to bleed...."