Prepare Thyself

MANILA, Philippines - Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok know it better more than anyone else on this planet. Imagine: letting close to five million people around the world watch you qualify literally a world away from the rest of the Formula One field. Not a pretty sight, is it? Still, despite their limited machinery, you can still see them sometimes battling somewhere in the midfield every Grand Prix or two. Now, think of Mark Webber. Despite being on the sharpest end of the F1 stick, he still has great lapses in concentration: remember his “take-off’ incident in the European Grand Prix?

As Webber probably knows by now, correct driving techniques and full concentration are required to get most out of any car, whether it’s a lowly compact hatchback or a luxury sedan. It’s extremely important that you learn to handle your car properly to avoid accidents. This is especially true during the typhoon season where accident rates tend to go up. Despite preparing your vehicle for this kind of weather, that’s only half of the equation. The other half always boils down to the driver and his driving habits.

Let There be Light

Think about it – even God created it first. Ever since ancient man discovered the many uses of light, they’ve been mesmerized by it. It has evolved a long way from the candle-and-lantern technology of the horse-driven 1880’s. Now, lights come in all sorts of shapes and sizes as well as varying levels of technology imbedded. The careful use of light is one of the keys in safe rainy day driving.

The general rule of thumb is to turn on the “park lamps” whenever the sky starts to darken. Of course, this is not limited to merely rainy day driving, but to any occasion where visibility is impaired such as sunrise and sunset. Believe it or not, this simple gesture could reduce vehicular accidents by as much as 30 percent based on a study conducted in the United States.

Park lamps provide some reference point, especially for drivers immediately following you. These lamps provide more increased awareness. Usually, a good sign to follow is to turn on your park lamps when any of your instrumentation becomes slightly unreadable. Cars with manual odometers for instance, should turn on their park lamps when the digits on their trip meters can’t be read without squinting.

Headlights provide the next best defense and are usually used when the visibility gets limited. Headlights provide better sight forward. This pair of lamps is actually aimed slightly towards the road rather than laser light straight, increasing the illumination on the road directly ahead. This makes a great tool in avoiding stalled vehicles or potholes. They are more useful when combined with fog lights.

Tempting as it maybe, never ever use bright lights during heavy downpour. A common misconception is that the bright beams provide more illumination than standard headlights during wet weather driving. Though it may be true for dry and humid summer nights, they impair visibility even more during heavy rains.

The bright beams are aimed higher and more perpendicular to the car compared to the low beams. Combine this with the fact that the car’s reflectors are designed to throw the bright beams further onwards than the normal beams result in a blind-fest. This is because the light from the bright beams would easily reflect on upcoming raindrops and the light reflected would actually trigger headlight glare onto the driver causing a degree of driving imparity.

The hazard should never be used during a heavy downpour. Despite what your best friend tells you, the hazard is not meant to be used as a beacon – that’s the job of your headlights and brake lights.  Remember that once the hazard is turned on, other drivers wouldn’t be aware if you’re trying to signal left or right. This could lead to some serious accidents especially on crowded intersections.

Steer Properly

Unless you’re driving the ill-fated Titanic, there’s a proper way to grip the steering wheel – whether a two-spoke, three-spoke or a four-spoke to ensure an ergonomically pleasing position as well as improved response time during duress.

Remember to grab the wheel with both hands. The older generation suggests the 10-2 position, meaning the left hand grips the wheel on the ten ‘o clock position, while the right does the same on the two ‘o clock position. With the advent of airbags, this isn’t the case any longer. Newer driving gurus say that the best position would be the 9-3. This means that the left grips the wheel on the nine ‘o clock position and the right on the three ‘o clock position. Besides the fact that it gives a racier feel, it more importantly reduces the risk to injury to your hands and arms in the unlike case when the airbag detonates from an accident.

In addition to the 9-3 position, the correct way to grip the wheel would be in a relaxed but firm manner with the thumbs sticking out, gripping the front surface of the steering wheel. The extended thumbs actually strengthen the grip, especially for women drivers, those with sweaty palms and those who use too much Armor-All.

Operating the steering wheel is certainly not the time to relax. As the captain of your ship, it is important that you keep aware of possible icebergs that you may encounter. For ships with slower reaction times such as a truck, make sure that you never put any part of your appendage through the steering wheel. Tempting as it maybe, never do a Steve McQueen – you won’t look as dashing. Kidding aside, sudden and jerky movement of the steering wheel may cause a heavy sprain to parts of your arm trapped through the wheel or worse fracture it.

The same is true when turning the wheel. For tight maneuvers, never grab the wheel from the inside. You run the risk of twisting your wrist when you have to move the steering wheel. With power-assisted steering now as standard on everything sans the owner-types, it is best to move the hands and wheels together as though they were one unit. As you exit a turn, simply rotate the steering wheel back to its center position, maintaining a firm grip on the wheel. 

Don’t Dog Fight on the Road

Highway 54 or known more for its modern name of EDSA is home to sudden braking and lane darting buses. These five ton menaces are pretty much the kings of the road. No matter how loud or how many horns you have, the best way to lessen possible emergency maneuvers with these beasts is to learn proper distances.

During heavy downpour, it is imperative that you follow the proper speed limit (60 km/h minimum and 100 km/h maximum for cars cruising on the highway). Funny enough, some people find a fetish of driving faster in the wet than in the dry, but Michael Schumacher they aren’t.

A good practice during cruising is to maintain at least a four to five-second distance from the car in front of you. To check, try marking a stationary landmark with your mind, such as an electric post. Without getting distracted, count the number of seconds it takes you to cross that mark after the car ahead zooms past. If you count less than four seconds, lift the gas and increase the gap. If keeping an eye on the time isn’t your style, just try maintaining a two-meter gap for every kilometer traveled. This means that if you’re running at 60 km/h, you should have a distance of around 120 meters from the car in front of you. Generally, there’s no harm if you increase your distance some more just to be safe.

In anyway, this should give you ample time to apply your brakes or lift the throttle in case something awry happens directly in front of you.

If you do need to apply the brakes, make sure you do it with ample warning for the car behind you. Though you may have four-wheel disc and ABS, the guy at the back maybe driving something with four-wheel drums as standard – so don’t do sudden braking especially for potholes and patches of water. Road imperfections aren’t a good excuse for sudden swerving for that matter, especially when traveling along SLEX. Also note that you may have blind spots, and an 18-wheeler may be waiting to smash into your pretty fender if a sudden lane change goes wrong. If you’re not careful enough to spot a pothole, try coasting by braking lightly or lifting the throttle. If you’re really too late, just go through it rather than risking a collision with another vehicle to either side.

Wishing for a Submarine

As much as we’d like to own James Bond’s submarine Lotus Esprit, you’ll have to be content with our everyday Toyotas or Hondas. If there’s no choice but to run your car through a flood, then do so – but make sure that your car could do it first!

The key here is to keep the water below your car’s air intake and keep the engine revs high enough to prevent water from entering the exhaust pipe. It’s important to remember that engines need to breathe! For manual transmission cars, the trick is to hang the car’s clutch putting in as much revs as your redline would allow while keeping the overall speed and pace slow. Going through floodwaters too fast isn’t beneficial to your car as doing so may cause a bigger ripple to open up and this may sometimes cause water to reach vital engine systems such as the belts and electrical causing the car to stall at the worse possible moment. Cars with automatic boxes have no choice but to engage the low position and try to wade the flood through.

Keep your speed to a walking rate and you should see the flood through. In case you have to turn back because the water levels are higher than you thought – forget it. Reversing or doing tight maneuvers are not advisable in these conditions. You’d run a bigger risk stalling on the maneuver than you stalling by going straight. Better plow through rather than chicken out. As brutal as it seems, this is the only way. If you find a high enough ground up ahead, then you can seek shelter there first.

Driving tips mentioned here are just the simple basics. Even for the most learned of drivers, it doesn’t do harm to read new material about the subject of proper driving techniques. Remember that car technology changes and sometimes the way to drive them could change. Refresher courses are beneficial as it could give new tips or improve on old diehard driving habits.

Though the value of your daily drivers isn’t even enough to pay for Michael Schumacher’s custom made Bridgestone rubber, the fact that you appear to be as every bit as informed and prepared as the great World Champion himself when it comes to proper wet weather driving could prevent you from getting pushed to the sidelines of the race called life.