SAY you’re hurtling down the highway at 160km/h. You’re feeling mighty fine in your oversized Gucci shades. The air-cond’s blasting in your face, perpetually freezing that little smile on your face from listening to the hilarious bickering of FlyFM’s radio deejays, Phat Phabes and Ben. The trees and the skies zoom past, a beautiful blur of green and blue outside your sparkly windows.
  All of a sudden, the biggest tapir you’ve ever seen outside of the zoo appears from a shrub some distance ahead and proceeds to prance across the road.
  Omigod, omigod! What do I do?, you scream inwardly, your foot hovering hesitantly over the brake and accelerator pedals because you’re undecided as to whether to slam the brakes or attempt whizzing past the creature, and all the while the tapir seems to be getting closer and closer and closer and WHAM! Your beautiful indigo Volkswagen Beetle (the exact one Barbie has) crumples, you crumple - and the tapir skippity-skips off to the other side with only a little scratch on his hind leg, which Mama Tapir will have to fix afterwards with a plaster.
  Now, none of this would have happened if you had signed up for the Sepang International Drive and Race Academy’s (SIDRA)’s Lady4Ladies course on defensive driving.
  So, what’s this SIDRA thing anyway?
  Basically, it’s an academy established to educate and train drivers on proper driving techniques, skills, road safety, defensive driving, conscientious while offering enthusiasts a chance to display their talents in a controlled and safe, progressive, fun and professionally managed environment.
  There are a variety of courses to suit your palate from the Basic course (which teaches you to avoid danger and deal with emergency situations under realistic road situations), to the Young Drivers course (which teaches young, immature drivers to be more mature on the road, thus decreasing the incidents of high-risk accidents), to the Drift course (which teaches you to do all those cool stunt moves at sharp turns).
  It all sounds very exciting - and students get to whiz around the Sepang International Circuit, where the courses are conducted, in the academy’s fleet of Porsche Cayman S while being instructed by the likes of some very famous and capable people in motorsports, like Sven Herberger, an endurance specialist from Germany.
  I couldn’t care less about sitting behind the steering wheel of the Porsche Cayman S - I much preferred the looks of the Toyota Celica, which seems to me more of a real racing car than the former, which has an appearance of a squashed alien frog but one fine day, the opportunity to participate in SIDRA’s Lady4Ladies course came up and there was no way I could have said ‘no’ because hey, I would be passing off the opportunity of a lifetime if I did and let’s face it, being the oft-stereotyped lousy woman driver, I probably needed all the help I could get.

Think fast. Act. It can save lives.

  Ugh. That sounds pretty much like a corny accident prevention ad but the gist of the matter is that it is true. Very true. What goes into your head that is translated into your limbs, into the movements of the car in that split second is the one determining factor as to whether you crash, escape unscathed for a moment only to crash into something else, or to escape unscathed - for good.
  The Lady4Ladies course is all about teaching women about handling road traffic in a smarter way and coping with risk situations that occur in daily road traffic. The course is divvied into 80 per cent paddock and 20 per cent track with contents of the course including a class room session, braking, circle, Moose test, slalom and track.
  I was quite fascinated with the Moose test, more on the name than anything else. It is a test used in Sweden for decades to test how a certain vehicle, usually an automobile, acts when avoiding a sudden danger, such as a moose, which they have in abundance over there. The point of the test is for the driver to drive onto the track, quickly swerve into the oncoming lane to avoid the obstacle and then immediately swerving back to avoid oncoming traffic.
  Although we were given instructions as to passing this bit of exercise, the brain has a tendency to freeze at the critical moment resulting in well, things not going as how they were supposed to go. Cones get knocked over, which is all right. But imagine them to be people, or moose, and it gives you the idea that gosh, I’d better get this right.
  After we were done with the serious stuff, we started on the slalom and track, which I enjoyed immensely. It was fun, zig-zagging through the cones. We learnt about understeering and oversteering, and how they can be dangerous on curves, plus things called ideal lines which if I remember correctly is the most optimum path to take on curves without crashing.
  It was an exhilarating experience, cruising round the track in the Porsche. It is a car a person can get used to, like getting reacquainted with a long-lost friend - it is that comfortable and driving at high speeds didn’t bother in the least, revealing the closet speed demon in me as I made dizzying sharp turns at 150km/h.
  All too soon, the course came to an end and I had to say goodbye to the Porsche I had grown attached to but I went back equipped with more knowledge and experience than before I came. As I drove my Perodua Kancil along the long road home, I felt a difference in the way I drove. I was more confident and more sure of my actions. I was more attuned to my car and was conscious of the minute details that went on when I eased my foot on the accelerator, when the car went over a hump - the ongoing exchange of action and reaction between driver and car.
  As the car became me and I became the car, I was certain that if there came a time when I had to think fast and act, I’ll be able to do so in a calm and collected manner because the car will never fail me because it understands me, I understand it and together, we will avoid obstacles. We will avoid the moose. The moose will be saved, and so will people.
  And all because I took up a course in defensive driving.

Porsche Cayman S Specifications 
- 6 cylinders, 3.4 l displacement, 295 bhp (217kW), 340 Nm
- Multi-stage resonance induction
- Integrated dry sump lubrication, 4-valve technology, VarioCam Plus
- Motronic ME 7.8 engine management system, electronic accelerator pedal
- 5-speed Tiptronic transmission, rear-wheel drive
Additional equipment according to SIDRA guideline:
- Two-way radio
- Roll cage
- H&R suspension
- Recaro bucket seats
- Schroth 6-point safety belts