car accident in Japan (yes we called the police) 🥲

Hello… so I’m here to share about the first (and hopefully last) time I got to sit in the back of a police car… 🙏🏻

TLDR: we scratched the car as we were parking it. In Japan, regardless of the scale of accident, if you want to claim car insurance, you have to make a police report BEFORE calling the rental company / insurance. Police will do a quick investigation to determine if it was really an accident and write a report. Once they’re done, you call the rental car hotline and tell them which station you’ve made the report. You may or may not need to return the car immediately / swap for a new one. We kept the car and returned it on it’s intended due date. No questions asked and no extra fees bcos we topped up a tier for the car rental insurance.

🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

If you’re int in the full story & some of my personal advice for renting a car in Japan, you can continue reading:

Honestly, we got scammed by the “free parking” in the Airbnb listing. When we got there the host texted that “parking is difficult”, “narrow parking space and it’s your responsibility to ensure the environment isn’t damage”, “paid coin parking nearby”…. Trust me, my friend drives well and there was parking assistance too…

When we got to the house, we realise that the entrance is right by a main road and it was the 2nd house right before the traffic light. We arrived at 5-6pm+ and was stuck in peak Kumamoto traffic. We had no idea how to park because I don’t think it was meant to be a parking lot so there’s the sidewalk in between. And it was a really narrow parking space because of a rack of 6 bikes that took up the lot.

In order to reverse park, you had to be the 1st and 2nd in the lane AND there has to be no car behind. We drove around and around a few times but there was no moment that we could actually safely reverse park.

So we decided to just park head-in. I looked out on the passenger seat side to ensure we didn’t hit the wall, and the driver focused on not hitting the bikes on the right. All good until suddenly there was loud impact noise and the car stopped moving. We had hit something and we didn’t even know what it was.

We got out to check and lol the car was scratched by this metal pipe that was jutting out that we completely didn’t know was there AND could never see from the car lol. We didn’t even know what to do. In the end we took the car out and I physically stood there as a parking cone as my friend went around and around until we had the chance to reverse park.

The scratch was pretty bad but thankfully we had decided to upgrade our car rental insurance. We honestly thought that all we had to do was call the car rental hotline, because in Singapore you always call your own insurance. In Japan, you have to call the police. Yes even for a scratch that don’t involve another vehicle etc. Only after you’ve called the police and they’ve concluded their investigations, THEN you call the car rental hotline.

But we had a problem. We were both using e-sim… so we effectively couldn’t make calls LOL. So we physically went to the nearest police station. But they were closed for patrol. So we went to the next nearest one half an hour away which was also their bigger regional office it seems. We brought the car rental agreement, internal driving permit, passport and other car documents. Also, we took a lot of photos of the scratch.

They couldn’t speak much English but they really tried. There were 10-20 officers there and most of them were working on our case. They took down our statement roughly and checked the nearest cctv to see if it was really an accident. After confirming, they asked us where the car is and gave us a ride back !! It was cool sitting at the back of a police car and yes the back seat doors only open from the outside / a certain way of opening.

When we went back, they handed our case over to the police officers that were already waiting there. These officers were from the aforementioned closed nearest office. So these officers took a look at the scratch and the pipe and began to take a bunch to measurements + photos. They even checked the depth of the scratch etc too. At the end, they explained to us exactly at what angle did the car hit the pipe and how the scratched form etc. They concluded it was an accident and told us to let the car rental insurance know of their police station name, and they left. They were very friendly and we are so thankful of that 🥹

We had to enlist the help of another friend residing in Japan to help us call the insurance hotline. You may or may not need to return the car immediately / swap for a new one. We didn’t bcos the police told us to check w the rental company, the rental company told us to check w the police. So we just didn’t return it till the date and timing we specified for the return.

All in all, thankful for Japan’s very nice police officers but would very much prefer to avoid such an experience in the future 🥲

❗️PERSONAL ADVICE❗️

- DO NOT ALL GET eSIM: It’s important to get a SIM card so you’ll have a Japanese number and so that you’ll be able to call the police LOL most of the forms for the car rental and police station, do require an active phone number too…

- GOOGLE STREET VIEW: realised the importance of google street view in Japan, it’s easy to miss a turn or not even know that this is your house when you’re actually driving. Always look at the street view before driving

- CAR RENTAL INSURANCE: driving in Japan is so different from SG. Would recommend upgrading the insurance especially if you decide to drive in more populated cities (in our case, Kumamoto)

Stay safe and happy travels!

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