You should slow down to a crawl at these 5 places in Singapore if you don't want an accident

There are places where you shouldn't speed, such as areas with frequent speed camera operations. And then there are places where you must never speed.

Today we are talking about the latter. These are areas and occasions where you should keep to a slow speed, not for fear of punishments, but rather, for the safety of everyone, including yourself.

1. Industrial buildings and workshop areas

You have probably seen the video and aftermath of the Audi that failed to slow down and ended up crashing, and wrecking a couple of parked classic cars in Carros Centre. That is one of the best reasons why we should all drive slow and cautiously inside Industrial buildings and workshop areas.

Industrial buildings tend to have slippery cement flooring. Factor in accidentally spilt oil and other liquids from workshops and you'll have a fatal combination for a slide that you surely can't recover from. And then there are the countless vehicle movements within the tight and confined area with tight turns and zero run-off areas...

Well, just don't speed in an industrial building.

2. Carparks - especially the indoor ones

Indoor carparks almost always have subpar lighting and lots of pillars which serves up plenty of blind spots.

As a carpark, there will surely be lots of vehicles driving about, often preoccupied with the search for parking spaces. Then there's the human traffic - people are heading to their cars and getting out of them. And it doesn't help that carparks are usually narrow and some can be really difficult to manoeuvre without damaging your car's bodywork and rims.

Also, like industrial buildings, many carparks have cement floors that can get really slippery when wet. The last thing you want is to lock up your brakes and slide into a wall, or a line of parked cars.

3. Spiral ramps

This one is a little specific. I'm talking about those spiral ramps that you can find in some industrial buildings and certain carparks (such as Plaza Singapura). These are dangerous enough to be mentioned separately even though they are a part of carparks.

In wet conditions, these ramps can be really slippery, to the extent where some goods vehicle will have a hard time building up enough grip to drive up, and motorcyclists might even slip and fall if they weren't careful with the throttle.

In dry conditions, these will usually load up your suspension and can really put your tyres at the limit of their grip if you were to go a little too quickly.

If there were any unexpected contaminants on the surface such as oil or water, you could easily lose control of the car if you are driving up or down a spiral ramp at high speed - and you would easily end up in either the inner or outer wall as well.

And then, there's the fact that there are usually massive blind spots, as your vision will be blocked by the wall. Should there be another car stopped in your path up ahead, you might not have enough time to slow down!

4. Car meets

Well, this isn't technically a place, but rather an occasion or event which is usually held in large carparks.

Car enthusiasts like to hold car meetups and gatherings, be it a large organised event, or smaller impromptu gatherings with friends to chit chat.

While typically held in large open carparks, there'll naturally be more human traffic than usual, as some will be walking around to mingle and look at the various cars that turned up.

With people sitting around, chilling with friends and distracted by all the cars around, it sure would be dangerous to drive fast at such events. You wouldn't want to crash into those fellow car enthusiasts or their precious cars!

5. Woodlands/Tuas checkpoint

If you have never driven into Malaysia, you probably won't know what I'm talking about. But, if you did, then you'll probably agree with this.

The vibes of the checkpoint area will put you off speeding already… I mean, you would look really suspicious if you try to drive too quickly here, don't you think?

And then there's the typically packed traffic situation, which will probably hinder any attempt to speed up. Even if the coast is clear, you wouldn't want to be driving quickly as there's still the biggest pain for drivers to deal with - those extremely narrow lanes require a very specific angle to enter, to avoid costly damages to your precious rims!

This article was first published in sgCarMart.