Ford brought its hugely successful global Driving Skills for Life (DSFL) programme to Malaysia for the first time last weekend. Held at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS), the event – which ran over two days, on December 17-18 – saw a total of 84 licensed drivers participating.
The Ford DSFL programme imparts safe driving skills in four key areas, these being hazard recognition, vehicle handling, space management and speed management. It includes both classroom and practical trainings sessions to help educate drivers of all levels in safe-driving skills.
The participants in the four sessions over the two days included Fiesta and Focus customers, who began with the classroom session learning about proper seat positioning, correct steering control, understanding understeer and oversteer, as well as getting tips on highway driving, driving in the rain, as well as other general dos and don’ts on the road.
The segment also covered Ford specific safety features such ABS, electronic stability program (ESP) and traction control system (TCS). As for the practical session, crucial skills such as the correct ABS braking technique, obstacle avoidance, ESP and a typically eventful slalom course were to be had.
I popped by on Sunday evening, when the last batch of attendees were going through the practical session exercises – while the coursework covered basic points, it proved valuable and highly informative to the participants, many of whom experienced the full workings of ESP in action for the very first time.
A Fiesta 1.4 manual was used to showcase the effects – or rather, the lack of – ESP, and when the tyres on that one had gone south from doing one too many skid control runs, a Focus sedan took over duties. The latter did a sterling job of highlighting the differences of not having and having electronic driver-aids to assist under volatile road conditions, all achieved with the simple switch of a button.
The participants came away suitably impressed with the programme. “A big thank you for organising such a wonderful programme and giving me the opportunity to learn what driving school didn’t teach me. My colleagues and friends are amazed that Ford is helping raise awareness on such a large scale – this is essential for today’s drivers,” one said about the programme.
Meanwhile, Ford is glad to do its bit to educate drivers. “Ford is proud to provide our global Driving Skills for Life programme to drivers in Malaysia, and to try and help make a difference on the roads here by raising awareness of safe driving practices,” said David Westerman, regional manager, Ford Export & Growth Operations.
“People are taking to the road in ever-greater numbers, often without the training to drive properly or the fundamental understanding of driving skills. Driver training, education and public awareness are imperative to making a difference,” Westerman added.
The event, which it effectively picked up the tab for, was a great move by Ford – each participant only had to pay a nominal RM50 confirmation fee to take part, a token sum merely to ensure that those who confirmed showed up (to preempt the tendency to say ‘yes’ and not show, which tends to happen a fair bit); it hardly made a dent in covering the total cost of the event.
The game’s well and truly on though, and plans are afoot for more DFSL programmes to run in 2012, so Ford owners, you’ll want to be in for the next one!
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advance driving / defensive driving should be made more affordable to drivers. currently a 1 day programme will set a person at least RM400 which is costly to many.
fully agreed with you. it should hv lower the price and aim for more participant. Or better still, G should include the Defensive Driving Course as a compulsory course for newbie driver when taking license.
my 2 sens
yup,agree with u… this type of course shud be made with the need for proper education in defensive driving skills, never put profit in front. human lives are more procious than a company’s profit, thus the gomen shud take the initail step n act fast, no dilly dally until PRU 35 also nothing is done
rm400 is quite affordable.. the biggest problem for organisers of such events is that its very expensive to run. rental of space, paying instructors..setup of tents. chairs, drinks.. etc. etc.
what value do we place on improving our driving?
Want cheap also can, bring your own car, new set of tyres, own F&B, cone, tent etc.
Just imagine RM 400/pax, ample 20 pax per session…..RM 8000 gross, minus car, F&B, tyres, insurance, etc., bring home only RM 200. So takpayah ler……
The same place as held by Honda
Anthony, after testing the ESP function.. Do you think it is an important technology to prevent accident?!? Please tell us more regarding and educate more ppl regarding the importants of these safety technology in this blog..
I didn’t do the course – one had to be signed up for that, and I was just there to sibuk, really. :) But an electronic stability programme is definitely a valuable thing to have. The purist can argue (and I know I sometimes do) that it dulls things, but it’s never bad to have something that can save your bacon when you least expect it. The ability to switch the entire bag off for hooligan moments is always welcome, of course.
It definitely helps a lot. For example it takes away understeer and oversteer from the driver. It basically allows you to be in control of the vehicle. During the course, we also taught the participants how to “manually” control understeer and oversteer in case their cars don’t have ESP.
My compliments for a job well done. I hope there will be more of such events.
I’ve been a Focus owner for the last 4 years and had no idea of this wonderful training! Nobody from Ford contacted me at all! Bummer!
Dude, join the Ford Owners Club for all these updates
http://www.fordownersclubmalaysia.com/
The program should include one full day training on not to double park and cut into adjacent lanes without signalling first.
Apart from that, it would be nice to include a education seminar on how on to stop fanboyism war between Japanese and Korean car owners in public forums.
Have attended similar course myself many years back (conducted by some party, not Ford) and I must say it is really really good. Lots of thing you learn they don’t teach in driving school. But it’s costly, about RM600 for 2 days. Hopefully one day our Gov’t can come up with some subsidy scheme to make it more affordable to everyone.
Only cars with ESC can have these kind of events, most cars sold here dont have ESC
vios got esc or not?
Even Vios don’t have ESC but the handling is superb more superb than Fiesta.
Fiesta so-so only especially the 1.4 engine
Vios in the Japan (Belta) does have ESC = VSC, only our pariah G didnt implement it..
http://toyota.jp/belta/safety/active/index.html
By the way their engine only 1.0 ~ 1.3L only…
this kind of program is truly important to every driver. This is because driver should know how the ABS and ESP working.
Nowadays many people know the important of ABS. In their mind, ABS safe life by having shorter distance to stop the vehicle. In fact, many people still not aware the ABS is providing control to driver to ‘turn the steering wheel’ to avoid or minimize accident. Instead of merely having shorter distance to stop only.
The Electronic Stability Program is still not popular in Malaysia. There may probably less than 10% of driver knew about ESP.
I hope this kindly of driving skill program can be organize often and lower down the price. It will certainly help people to improve their driving knowledge as well as their skill in certain circumstances.
I went for the Honda Safety Driving Course in 2007 for free. Only invited Honda owners had the chance, I think I was quite lucky indeed. We did full braking avoiding the cone with and without ABS, and medium speed cornering with and without VSA (Vehicle Stability Assist), and some others.
FIESTA for girls…..
POLO GTI for boys…
Guys, if i want to organize for non Ford cars, anybody interested to conduct it. Anybody I can contact for more details. Very interested.
Go with AAM, better, structured, recognised and certified. Other organisers either for fun or education only.