The Post That Has Reached The End Of The Road

Driving can be like an art. It's totally unchoreographed, but usually very coordinated. Unfortunately there are dickheads on the road which spoils everyone's fun once in awhile. It's probably caused by the overly simple test you get at the start. You go in, they give you a piece of paper with 30 multiple choice questions on it, then you select the correct answers. If you pass, you pay your $60 and receive a L-license; fail, and you come back the next day to re-do it. A solution would be to scrap this test and replace it with an IQ test. Pity this won't happen in the near future (as long as Jeremy Clarkson isn't in charge of this), so we have to learn how to drive safely. Or in other words, drive like everyone's out to get you.

For this, some of us boys went up to Ipswich to take part in a Safe Driving Training course. There they taught us how to deal with cars with no ABS (that's Anti-lock Braking System) and how to steer properly. The braking course was where I met my greatest nemesis...

... Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. It was a Proton Savvy though. Size of a proton and not savvy. I had the privelege of hopping into it first, before everyone else had the chance to enjoy what the little Malaysian car had to offer.

The interior's basic, of course. For $16,999, you pay for what you get. There was a stereo, air-conditioning, cup-holders (of course) and other usual things you get in a car like a steering wheel and pedals. The car that I drove had the optional Tiptronic gearbox, which is an automated manual.

And it was absolutely rubbish. In the time it took to shift gears, 3 days had passed. Coupled with a weedy little four-pot, 0-100km/h was completed in the time it took a new universe to be formed. But with $16,999, you also get ABS which is standard among most new cars.

Which is a very good idea. Earlier in the day, we had to do a course which involved driving and heavily braking a non-ABS equipped and ABS equipped car. As some of us might know, ABS is there to prevent your brakes from locking up. Therefore your tyres will continue to move and you will always have grip. I was in the non-ABS equipped car first, an old Nissan Pulsar. Rubbish car, coupled with a driver with no experience with a non-ABS car results in hilarity. For most anyway. I managed to run over 4 policemen (see: cones) in my first go. Second one was a lot better, with the tyres not locking up at all, so I got full control of the steering. My last run was a bit of a disaster, with me running over 3 policemen and into the imaginary semi-trailer (once again, see: cones).

It's pretty frightening when you think about it. We take all this technology in our cars for granted. We complain about the amount of abbreviations there are in the driver's car manual. However it's there to prevent accidents. The difference between a non-ABS and ABS equipped car, could possibly be the difference between being able to swerve around an obstacle or being lodged underneath a truck. It could happen, and it does happen.

We saw pictures of such events and they are truly frightening. It's sad to see such things happening in this day and age, but the thing is some drivers are stupid. It's something we have to live with, so all we can do is learn how to drive smart!