Staying Safe in the Haze and Rain - By Alex Yoong

The haze has been getting me down lately. As a Malaysian, I’ve had to grudgingly get used to it, but this year has been especially bad. It’s so depressing to get out on the highway and see just a veil of white smoke.

In light of the current haze seasons, Carlist.my has provided several tips on driving in hazy conditions.

Things like keeping your lights on even in the day and to slow your speed according to how much visibility is available. These are all common sense things to do for obvious reasons.

In my experience it’s also good to not be in the slow lane when visibility is very bad. I’ve seen many multi car pile-ups over the years and the deaths that do occur tend to be the owners of small cars that were in the slow lane.

It makes sense to be extra careful and slow down, however if there is a pile up, the big trucks are just not able to stop in time and a small car will always lose out to one of the behemoths. So always try and be hyper aware of what’s in front of you and really consider where you want to be if there are heavy goods vehicles around you.

I was in Thailand a couple of weeks ago to help with coaching of a team and its driver. It was interesting to note quite a few pile-ups on the high way there too. No more or less than we get in KL to be honest, although that’s my own personal opinion and not backed up by any stats.

One thing I did notice that was different was on the last day when it was raining. People in Thailand do not seem to slow down as much as we seem to do here in KL when it starts raining.

I was talking to the team about it and apparently there is a good habit of buying new tyres over there while in Malaysia, people tend to wear their tyres until they are bald or go for the re thread option. I myself have been guilty of this on occasion.

That suddenly made so much sense to me. How many times have we seen accidents happen in the wet in KL due to having bald tyres on the car? Bald tyres can actually feel perfectly fine in the dry, which can lead to over confidence that is quickly exposed once the rain catches you out. 

Then there is the flip side of that, which is once you have been caught out, it’s easy to lose all confidence and then be like an old granny whenever it rains, even when you have new tyres. The memory of being caught out forever leaving you excessively cautious.

My theory is that there are a large population of drivers in Malaysia that drive so excessively slow when It rains because they don’t have confidence in themselves when all you really need to do is make sure you have tyres on your vehicle which has a lot of thread on it to disperse the water and make it safe for you and your passengers.

If this sounds familiar to you or have just had an unexplainable scare in wet conditions, please have a look at your tyres. And if they look a bit worn, change them. Your car will feel completely different when it next rains.