The Strait Times Monday
October 31,2005
Car agent dies when test drive goes
wrong
By Ben Nadarajan
SHE was out on a test drive with her last customer of the day
before rushing off to a friends wedding.
But the 22 year old car sales agent He Xueli, just four months into
her new job, never made it to the dinner with her boyfriend.
The customer she was sitting next to lost control of the new Mazda
MX-5 while driving along Upper Paya Lebar Road at about 6pm on
Saturday.
The silver sports car flew over the road divider, smashed head on
into a black BMW, flipped over it and came crashing down into a van
in the other lane.
The driver, a 24 year old warehouse supervisor, managed to stagger
out of the badly battered car alive.
Ms He suffered a broken neck. She had to be unbuckled from her seat
and carried out by passers-by.
The horrifying seconds before the out of control car came to a halt
also caused Ms He to have a heart attack, as paramedics later found
she had suffered cardiac arrest.
Her light blue blouse and black slacks the uniform for Mazda
sales staff were stained with blood. Her strapless high heels lay
by the side of the road. She was sent to Tan Tock Seng Hospital but
died there an hour later.
The Mazda driver has been arrested and is out on bail.
The five people in the BMW were taken to Changi General Hospital
where they received outpatient treatment for chest pains and
breathing difficulties.One of them, a seven year old boy, also had
abrasions on his knees. A couple in the van escaped unhurt.
Ms He started working at Mazda dealer Village Credit in Upper Bukit
Timah four months ago. Before that, she was with a car rental shop.
Colleagues say the Village Credit showroom had run out of the MX-5
model, so Ms He had to get one from another showroom in Macpherson
Road.
She did not want to go for the test drive at first because of her
friends wedding dinner later in the evening. She wanted to let
another agent handle the customer.but we were all busy as it was a
Saturday evening and the showroom was quite packed then,said a
colleague,who did not want to be named.
She initially thought she would tell the customer to come back
another day, but she felt it wasnt good customer service so she
agreed to go with him.
Barely 5 minutes into the journey, the customer lost control of the
car on the winding road which is layered with metal plates due to
construction works there.The colleague said they were not
travelling on the usual test-drive route taken by Mazda sales
agents.
The Mazda MX-5, also known as the Miata, costs about $110,000. It
can hit a top speed of 191kmh.It uses rear-wheel-drive system, and
motoring experts said such cars can easily swerve out of control if
the driver suddenly takes his foot off the accelerator.
Ms Hes employers declined to comment on the accident, but car
agents interviewed could not recall any colleague killed in a test
drive accident before.
Ms He was the only child of an odd job labourer and a mother who
works in a bakery. At the mortuary yesterday morning, her mother
was in tears and declined to be interviewed.
Mss He stopped school after her O levels. But a relative said she
recently started night classes for a marketing diploma as she
wanted to earn more money so her parents can retire.
