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How often have you seen a youtube video of someone’s onboard dash cam that shows, in the first few seconds perfect driving conditions where the road is dry, the weather is sunny and not so many cars on the road – only to then witness a sudden impact and the whole road littered with accident debris. Heck, you may even have had personal encounters too and it’s probably an experience you wouldn’t want to go through again, ever if possible.
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With ever increasing number of vehicles on the road, the threat of something unfortunate happening outside is half the story; in-car distractions like WhatsApp messages and Facebook status updates constantly vie for your attention. How often has it happened to you when you suddenly look up from the screen and there’s an obstacle on your road. No matter how skillful you think you are, don’t try to fiddle with your phone when you’re behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. Driving schools try, as far as possible to produce ‘competent’ drivers; people who have sufficient knowledge on road etiquette and the law to have a good idea on how everyone should behave on public roads. But every once in a while, being just “competent” is not enough.
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The need to improve driving skill has never been more important. Contrary to what some might think, good driving skills isn’t just about going faster around a slalom course; it’s an amalgam of a few things such as the ability to anticipate changing driving conditions, driving a vehicle equipped with the latest active and passive safety features, understanding how said vehicle behaves when taking evasive actions and how to recover from temporary loss of control, among others. Even if the car comes with ABS, ESP, etc, not many owners have truly experienced what’s it like when those features come into play, which may aggravate the heightened emotions when you realise your car is going to spin out of control.
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In addressing such issues, Nasim Sdn Bhd, the official distributor of Peugeot in Malaysia has organized the Peugeot Driving Experience, a course that involves learning the basics of proper sitting posture, steering reach and position, proper way to control the steering wheel, braking and manoeuvring, among others. Taunted as the first of such course ever organized in the world, the company sees it as its corporate responsibility in not only selling high quality and feature packed cars, it also aims to educate its buyers in its proper use, beyond just driving from Point A to Point B. And it was a truly unforgettable experience.
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The morning started early, with the team preparing the sacrificial …. I mean, test cars. Three unit each of 208, 408 and 508 were used for the training.
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They also had these beauties on display but alas, they’re teasers for the next level in the course.
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Seat belt, check. Rear view mirror check. Gear in neutral, check. No, this isn’t your basic driving school instruction. Here, we learn about how the legs should be angled, the seating height and the arms reach towards the steering, as well as how we should adopt a ‘cross-steering’ method instead of what ‘push-pull’ as how some of us did back in school.
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I’ve been told before how cool it is for automotive journalists to be able to have access to various cars and that we can whack the car kau-kau without worrying about the consequences. The truth is, we don’t (at least, most of those I know of don’t do that). Before taking any vehicle, we sign an indemnity form which makes us be fully responsible for the car. Failure to adhere to this and abusing the car would either land us with the repair bill or a ban in future test drives. Or both. And if you think who’s to know about said ill-treatment if there are no dents or scratches, the tires are quite honest in bursting your story. So in most cases, we’d probably push the car a little, maybe up to 80% of its capabilities
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Now in an event like this, being hooligan is not only encouraged, it’s a prerequisite. We’re all to throw caution to the winds and floor, twist, yank and brake as hard as possible so that we can see and feel the car’s behaviour under such extreme driving situations. After the briefing and short demonstrations on how we should prep our seating position, we were then ushered to the various pavilions set up for the 3 courses designed to highlight various points in driving.
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The participants are divided into 3 teams with the following arrangements:-
- 208 – Slalom where we put to practice how to turn the steering wheel in quick succession using the cross-steer method
- 408 – Oversteer and understeer where we see how a car with and without ESP behave
- 508 – Obstacle avoidance with braking where we learn to trust the ABS system and how we should treating the brake pedal
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My team started off with the Oversteer and Understeer activity which requires us to pay no heed to the tires. But first, some ‘lubricants’ to make the experience more – erm, enjoyable.
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A special solution of oil and soap is poured into the entry corner and we were given two 408s to drive; one with its ABS module deactivated and the other with it being active. Depending on how fast you’re travelling in, the angle of the steering wheel and, if you have an overzealous instructor who has a tendency to pull the handbrake sitting beside you, you’ll be enjoying lots of drifting in the 408. Now that’s fun an all in a controlled environment like the one they set up here but trust me, you don’t want to do this when driving next to a 40-footer prime mover.
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With the ESP module online, the car rights itself in any given situation, be it oversteer where the car turns at an angle beyond where you’re pointing or understeer where you’re still moving straight when you’ve already turned the wheel. The funny part for us was trying to break the system to see if we could execute a flawless drift with the ESP on – I ended up looking like some “L” driver trying to look cool and ended up like some fat hippo trying to dance on ice.
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The next course had us swerving around cones in a course that involves an S-bend , a hairpin turn, slalom section and .. well, stop isn’t exactly in our vocabulary here.
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It may look easy but the faster you go, the more deft you need to be with the steering wheel and it’s particularly challenging when you’re used to push-pull (which demonstrates how inadequately slow it is compared to cross steering)
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Glad to report that I didn’t kill any cones that day – I think.
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The third and final course for us was the braking and maneuvering which saw us stabbing the 508’s brakes while steering to avoid obstacles. Among the three, this is probably the most pertinent since we live in an environment where people lane change without signalling or in the case of other drivers who doesn’t know how to anticipate ahead and suddenly eats into your lane after realizing the lane he/she was travelling on is about to end.
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In most cases, we’d swerve to avoid hitting only to spin out of control. The 508’s ABS and ESP does a fantastic job at keeping the car straight and leveled, even when undertaking emergency braking. Where once you needed lightning quick reflexes and skill, modern technology has made driving a lot easier and safer.
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At the end of the day, such grueling activities isn’t without its costs. The tires begin to show its wear and tear and that’s not counting how many brake pads we murdered that day. Nasim has arranged this event specifically for Peugeot owners and for a small fee of RM100 which is a real bargain considering tires and pads don’t come cheap. And that’s not even counting setting up the marquee, manpower, engaging instructors, etc. As this is the inaugural event, Peugeot Malaysia is considering to roll this out nation wide and hopefully, with enough participation, they can conduct Level 2 soon.
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Participants will leave with some door gifts and a certificate of participation which then qualifies him/her for level 2 if and when Peugeot Malaysia decides to organize one. Personally for me, it was an eye opening experience and I certainly felt that I have took him some skills that’ll come in handy the next time I caught in a sticky situation. One thing that is clear for us all; modern technology like ABS, EBD, BA and ESP are designed to keep us safe, not to allow us to go faster in public roads. Accountability always rests with the driver and it is ultimately up to us to exercise caution whenever we’re out there – and courses like these goes a long way in leveling up your driving XP.
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