By Yong Soo Heong
The highway is supposed to be a place of order — three lanes of disciplined flow, each vehicle a cog in the great machine of movement. Leaving Behrang R&R earlier today (June 21), I eased into the fast lane at 110kph, the road stretching southbound like a smooth ribbon of certainty. But certainty is a fragile thing.
Courtesy nudged me to the middle lane when another car loomed in my rearview mirror, eager to overtake. No point hogging the highway, I thought, unlike those who mistake toll payments for entitlement – to be on the fast lane always no matter what. I slowed to a measured 95kph, content to let speedsters streak past. Prudence, after all, is its own reward.
Then, in a split second, order shattered. A young motorcyclist, who apparently had been idling on the grass verge, suddenly lunged forward onto the tarmac. His machine bucked, control lost, and he was dragged across the highway in a violent slide. The motorcycle skidded to a halt, still mercifully contained on the left-most lane, but his helmet spun free — a rogue wheel of fate rolling into my middle lane. For a heartbeat, it was me versus chance. One wrong twitch of the steering wheel and Father’s Day would have ended in headlines.
The Malay proverb malang tak berbau — misfortune has no scent — rang true in that instant. Accidents don’t announce themselves. They erupt, unbidden, leaving us to reckon with luck and reflex. I was fortunate not to be zig‑zagging at reckless speed. Fortune, too, that restraint had guided me moments earlier. For the motorcyclist, he was also lucky — the car on the third lane was also not going fast and braked in time.
The irony was not lost on me. Just the day before, I had returned from HAWANA 2026 in Butterworth, the National Journalist Day celebrations where responsibility and vigilance were recurring themes. On the highway, those same values played out in real time: respect for others, discipline in action, and the humility to yield.
As the scene replayed in my mind, I heard the voice of my late schoolmate and riding instructor, Clinston Tan Kok Hoe. Before my JPJ test at Batu Uban decades ago, he had told me: You must be in control of your machine, not the other way round. If you allow your machine to control you, then trouble starts. His words, once a lesson in youth, now stood as a verdict on the crash I had just witnessed.
Machines are unforgiving. They magnify our errors, punish our lapses, and demand mastery. The motorcyclist’s plight was a stark reminder: control is not optional, it is survival.
That drive became more than a commute. It was a meditation on chance, discipline, and the fragile line between routine and catastrophe. Father’s Day, meant to be a celebration, turned into a cautionary tale. Yet it was also a reaffirmation: prudence saves lives, courtesy preserves order, and wisdom — whether from proverbs or from friends long gone — endures.
On the highway, as in life, we are all riders. The question is whether we steer with control, or let the machine drag us into chaos.
WE