RIDZWAN A. RAHIM participates in a safety driving course and comes back with a better understanding of the cars' electronics.

The writer executing an evasive manoeuvre in an S-Class.

Tackling turns 1 and 2 of the Sepang track in a pack of C-Class.

Slalom teaches participants to drive smoothly and plan their paths carefully.

OF all the things that I took home after participating in a recent Mercedes-Benz safety driving course, the most significant was faith. Faith in God during an emergency, and faith in electronics.

In an emergency, a driver only has a split second to react to the situation. Guided by instinct, the driver will react based on whatever he or she already knows about driving. This knowledge however may not apply anymore to modern cars.

For example, most drivers under normal braking conditions start out with little brake pressure and, whenever necessary, increase their pedal effort.

The problem is they tend to do the same in an emergency situation and this behaviour often leads to a crash since the car could not be stopped in time.
The correct way to brake, in cars equipped with anti-lock braking system or ABS, is to apply maximum pedal pressure from the beginning. And yes, you can steer and no, the car will not go into a spin.

This is what the Mercedes-Benz Driving Experience course is about. People have to believe that in an emergency, ABS and the rest of the electronics in a Merc — such as ESP (Electronic Stability Programme) and Brake Assist — will intervene and help bring the car safely to a stop.

“Most of the accidents that we have in Australia are nose-to-tail accidents because people jump on the brake and they don’t believe that they can still turn the car,” said Lincoln Burns, one of the four Australian instructors on hand that day.

Which was the reason some of the earliest exercises involved braking.

Driving a wide range of Mercs — the S-Class, E-Class, C-Class, B-Class and A-Class — members of the Press were asked to perform braking in a straight line, evasive manoeuvring without braking and high-speed lane-change while braking — very real everyday driving situations.

We were given specific instructions. In the straight line braking exercise, for example, we were told to get the car up to 70km per hour and brake hard at a specific point.

To get their points across, the instructors would rather have you knocking down the cones than braking too early or not going fast enough.

“Don’t slam. Press the pedal as fast and as hard as you can,” said Burns.

Hurling Mercedes-Benz’s flagship model, the huge S-Class, down the carpark, I knew I had done enough when the car’s seatbelts tightened and the seats adjusted in split second in anticipation of an impact.

The various Mercs handled differently but what they had in common was stability. None skidded or spun, even when half of the car was on the tarmac and the other on a very slippery skidpad.

The next exercise was slalom, which was fun. We were asked to go through a slalom course, slowly at first and gradually faster as we got ourselves accustomed to the course.

The idea was to be smooth: look ahead a few cones and plan your path carefully. There should be no drama. As they say in Formula 1, if it looks dramatic, it’s probably going to be slow.

In slalom, we also learnt where to look. Most accidents happen because drivers concentrate at what’s blocking their path, like a broken down car, a stray animal or a traffic cone. The right way is to look at the path around the obstacle and point the car where you want it to go.

We rounded off the day’s proceeding by driving four laps around the Sepang circuit in the C-Class, led by instructor Nathan Pretty, who is a V8 Supercar racing driver by profession.

Here, I discovered that the concept of the racing line is not obvious to everyone. Despite having ESP, the car in front managed to go off the track at one of the hairpins.

The one thing we did not do that day was turn ESP off. Our C-Class has an ESP Off button prominently placed on the dashboard. Theoretically, you should be able to turn ESP off and have a bit of fun; you know, do some sideway actions or spin around a little bit like in the movies.

But no.

Essentially, the ESP button controls the ASR (Acceleration Slip Regulation) department of the car. When you push it, it allows the rear wheels to spin, which is necessary sometimes in slippery or off-road conditions.

When you try to take off on a wet grassy lawn, mud or snow in Europe, ESP will not let the rear wheels spin and the car will never move. With ESP off, the wheels are able to gain some momentum and get through the loose surface.

But it always defaults back to on. “It will never turn ESP off. Your steering sensors, your diff control, your G sensors all still work. So if you were to turn the button off and thought of having a bit of fun, over 80km per hour it will turn back on. And if you touch your brake at any stage or if the car tends to slide, it will turn back on, it will override you,” explained Burns.

“What I like to say to people is that when you hit the button, the ESP hops in the back seat. It watches. You say to the car, ‘I don’t need your help.’ The car says ‘okay, I’ll let you have a little bit of fun but I will watch over you and protect you if I need to’,” said Burns.

Misconceptions about ABS and ESP

WHILE technologies such as anti-lock braking system (ABS) and Electronic Stability Programme (ESP) are becoming standards in modern cars, they are still very much misunderstood.

One misconception about ABS is that it stops the car in a shorter distance. It doesn’t. In fact, it may take longer to stop when you are on a gravel or dirt road.

What ABS does though is it controls all four wheels separately. So if one wheel locks up or hits oil, that one wheel is controlled by the system while the other three wheels are stopping you at 99.9 per cent braking capacity, said Mercedes-Benz driving instructor Lincoln Burns.

“As a trained driver and having no ABS and if I hit the brake pedal and one wheel locked up, I have to come off the brakes and release all four wheels to correct that one wheel skid. I’ll never beat the system that way,” said Burns, who is also a racing driver.

Mercedes-Benz’s ESP, which in other makes are known as Dynamic Stability Control (DSC), Electronic Stability Control (ESC) or Electronic Vehicle Stability Control (EVSC), is a system that constantly monitors for possible spins and reacts by braking selectively and reducing or increasing engine torque.

People think ESP hinders their driving when they want to have fun. Burns begs to differ.

“I am convinced that they can do a lap faster on a race track with it on. If you drive correctly, it shouldn’t interfere at all. It only interferes if you make a mistake.

“So if you get on the throttle too early and create wheel spin, the car will override you because ESP says ‘We got wheel spin so I need to kill the engine’. Same goes if you turn in too early or too late and the car wants to slide, ESP will kick in. A good driver shouldn’t get wheel spin in a corner. He should be smooth, not slide around.

“It is a myth. I would rather be safe and protected than try and control the car without ESP,” said Burns.

Registration for the Mercedes-Benz Driving Experience 2008 in July is now open. A fee of RM1,800 applies. Call any Mercedes-Benz Malaysia dealer or customer care centre at 1-800-88-1133.