Car Accident

I know this is a diversion from my usual subject material, but I thought I really needed to say something about the car accident we just had.
We were picking up some fellow teachers (Melissa, Kat, and Sarah P) last Friday for our final team training session. We were out on the road in front of our university and it was about 8:15. The car in front of us braked hard and came to a complete stop so I braked hard and stopped behind him. The truck behind me did not brake at all and slammed into us. Thankfully no one in the car was seriously injured. We have a little Rav4 and the car that hit us was a big Toyota SUV. It's bumper hit our rear spare tire and pushed it into the back door and window. The other driver was a young guy, a student, and his mom and uncle showed up just after the police. The uncle drove an expensive car with official government plates and I got really nervous when I saw him.
Now, I want to explain something. In Laos, whenever someone has an accident, the fault is decided by the insurance companies or the police. Unless the accident involves a foreigner, in that case the fault is almost always the foreigner's. I knew this, and I have always figured that in the event of an accident, best case scenario I don't have to pay to fix the other guy's car and I only have to pay to fix mine. I have heard stories of people hitting foreigner's cars that are parked in front of restaurants and the foreigners being forced to pay for the repairs.
So you can understand why I was nervous when I saw this important man get out of the car and walk towards us. However, he smiled at me and asked me what happened, then he said:

"Why don't we just take your car to a repair shop and we'll get an estimate and I can just pay for everything right there."

I was blown away, so the driver's mother got in our car (which thankfully was still drivable) and we drove to a body shop guy that I knew. He had done some work on our car already and knew who I was, and he was only five minutes from where the accident happened.
Well, the end of the story is that the following Tuesday we picked up our car and it looks like new! They did an amazing job by any standards and you wouldn't even know it had been in an accident. Until I picked the car up I was nervous that I would get short-changed somehow, but our Father was watching out for us. I didn't pay a single penny. I still can't believe it. No one that I've talked to here in the ex-pat community has ever heard of an accident ending up like this. PTL!!