Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

At the beginning of today I was so tired of driving. I racked up over 500km over a period of 26 hours. Friday night was taking people in and out of the city for to celebrate Doug's birthday. (100km). Saturday racked up 340km as I had to drive my folks back and forth to some church halfway to Canberra, and during the night I had a house warming in Erskinville (another 100km).

You'd think thats enough driving for one weekend. Except it turned out that Sunday was when my AAMI Skilled Drivers test took place. And that restored my love of driving.
The course took place in Nirimba TAFE up near quakers Hill. Half the day was theory and half the day was practical. The theory was so-so, stuff you already know, but things which you kind of know. One exercise really resonated with me however, which was when we drew a scale of all the things that annoy us on the roads, like tail-gaters, Taxis, speed cameras and so on. And then we compare it with the consequences of messing up just a little and crashing. I know on friday night my mate was telling how she deliberately goes at top speed past a speed camera since it only works in one direction, just 'to stick it to the cops'. Yeah sure, but all it takes is on little mishap and suddenly all that bravado means jackshit.

Anyway moving onto the fun stuff, after work we did a series of practical exercises. There were four exercises, being the Slalom, the hairpin, emergency lane change and emergency lane change stop. The Slalom(ducking between flags/cones) was by far the most fun and hair-raising since you have to keep your vehicle speed constant AND keep weaving through the cones. We did it at only 45km/h and it was incredibly difficult. Then we dropped 5-10km/h off that speed and it was an easy task. All four tasks involved doing it at 45 and then dropping to 35 and seeing how much difference it makes.

The hairpin turn is just going around a tight corner again at a constant 45km/s. In real life its not so hard because you flutter the brake, but without the brake, its so easy to lose control of the car. The emergency lane change and lane change stop involves going straight down 3 lanes and at the last second the instructor yells stop, stop left or stop right and you have to follow what he says. Its only cones that you might run into, but its a heart pounding exercise.

What I found great was the Camry really did hold its own against some of the other cars. Sure there were some bombs, but there some MX-6s, Integras and other nice cars. Out of the 'hot' cars, only the Integra held nicely to the road. The camry's size and weight work against it, but its 'hard, non-ABS' brakes and reasonably solid handling allowed me to have a very minimal witches hat-kill-rate. Having a few years experience on top of the other drivers helped, but still its sobering to realize how easy it is to crash a car.

But still, whilst its just witches hats, its a heck of alot of fun! The AAMI course is completely free for AAMI comprehensive insurance owners and their kids, or its 165$ if you're not with AAMI. Its probably not that great if you had to pay for it, but for holders of an AAMI policy, you'd be mad not to give it a go.

EDIT: Thanks to Julian for pointing out that the word is Slalom, not Shalom...