Our first drive

In this week, we were given theory lessons by Najmi where most of the lessons materials that he used were from advance driving course. We learned how to identify different types of dangers on the road bla bla bla. Anyway, we don't want to bore you by telling you all that coz its DRIVING TIME!

During the driving lesson, we learned manoeuvres such as doing S thru a slalom, acceleration sense, and others that you'd find in advance driving course. Once we have completed all the course, we were challenged with a combination of all the manoeuvres that we learned.

5-step parking

The combination consists of these steps, hence the 5-step parking name:

step 1: From stationary position, we have to go through a series of cones lined up as slalom and coming to a stop

step 2: Go through the same slalom, in reverse & into a parking space

step 3: Come out of the parking space & side park into a different parking space

step 4: Exit from the parking space & park into a different parking space, front in

step 5: Exit out of the parking space, make 2 hair pin turns & finally into a parking space, all while in reverse!

These 5-steps is a compulsory driving test required by the cops in the UK. Keng did a pretty good time of 1:11s, which is equivalent to the record time made by some anonymous cop. The nearest competitor that day came close to Keng's was 4s slower :). We got a 3rd placing for this earning 6 valuable points.

Lane changing & cadence braking

This was fun. We were told to do medium speed lane changing in a 2 lane wide road, it's tight I tell you. A lot of guys had close call with the curb when they spun out from doing the lane changing. The other technique was cadence braking ala manual ABS. The steps to execute this are:

1. Travel to about 70 kph (Keng went up to 100kph),
2. Lock the brakes (remember to clutch in and slam the momma!)
   
3. Steer away from danger while the brakes are still locked; the car will still be going straight at this point
4. Release the brake; this will steer the car away from danger
5. Lock the brakes again; this is to slow down the car

These are emergency procedures to avoid obstacle for a car without ABS assistance, if your has ABS equipped, just press the brake as hard as you can & steer the car away from danger. Let the ABS do it's work.