Please think twice before choosing YEW ENG KIAT as your driving agent/instructor at Safety Driving Centre @ Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
I (21M) was referred to Mr. Yew Eng Kiat because he had a decent package of RM2,100 (manual) and was said to have early test slots. He convinced us that booking a JPJ test slot with an agent would be significantly faster. What followed was 16+ hours of a deeply unpleasant learning experience involving ear-splitting tirades of vulgar profanities, public humiliation, and extreme unprofessional practices.
I had 4 classes with him (4 hours each), followed by 1 extra class (1 hour). During my first class, he made me watch YouTube videos on RPK and RSM. He did briefly explain the engine in Mandarin, which was redundant anyway since the test was in English/BM.
On my 2nd lesson, he spent the first 45 minutes driving me somewhere so he could eat breakfast on my paid time. I didn't know I paid money just to spend my early mornings watching this man chomp down some nasi kandar. This pattern continued across the rest of the 4 lessons, he would also occasionally have me drive somewhere so he could buy cigarettes.
During circuit, he explained the formulas for each component. Initially, I thought this was great, but I soon realized how problematic his approach was. Not the formula themselves; but his rigid, overly literal interpretation of how they should be applied. For example, if I turned the steering wheel 1 ½ rotations instead of 1, even when adjusting for how close I was to a divider or the circuit boundary, he would yell at me for being stupid and not following instructions. Yet if I followed his formula exactly without accounting for my surroundings, he would berate me for having no brain and being incapable of thinking for myself.
Apparently, I was just expected to follow his instructions to a T while simultaneously knowing when to disregard them, with no room for error either way. When he would go on a loud tangent about how I was an idiot, I'd just calmly breathe through my nose and realize if I was stuck in a job I hated with only one skill to my name, I'd be bitter and miserable too.
And he would often lean his entire sweaty body all up onto the driver's seat to turn the steering wheel and change gears for me, effectively performing the manuevres on my behalf. Whenever we completed the component in successfully, he considered it as a teaching success, meanwhile he did most of the work himself. Like, good job mate. The car might have been in the right position, but I barely learned how to do it independantly.
Naturally, when I attempt the manouevres myself, I struggle to replicate what he had been doing for me. I eventually brought it up to him and asked if he could let me practise without constantly intervening physically and verbally with his big mouth. However, instead of understanding where I was coming from, he looked very displeased and would scrutinise my every move even further, seemingly waiting for me to make my next mistake.
The impression I got was that he was more interested in proving that I couldn't manage without him than in helping me develop the skills to do so. Whenever I made a mistake, he treated it as a confirmation that I was incapable of doing things on my own. Being screamed at while trying to coordinate the clutch, accelerator, gears, and steering in his dilapitated car is no easy task.
When I did made mistakes, his screaming outbursts were genuinely so loud that people around the driving centre would turn and look. When I drove past other people in the circuit, I would make eye contact and hope people symphatised with me having to be in a car with satan's literal reincarnation.
Even my dad witnessed his behavior when he visited. Sometimes, his driving instructor friends would walk up to him to chat, and he'd openly talk badly about me in front of me. I brushed it off because I didn't wanna get into it with someone of that temperament.
This is not just a case of a bad driving instructor, but a man with arrested development unfit to be anywhere near a driving school becuase he takes his life's anger out on his PAYING clients.
Other than doomscrolling on this phone while I was driving on public roads as a learner, which seems tame compared to his other professional misconduct, his car was in the most DEPLORABLE condition I've ever seen. I don't think he quite grasps how bad his car was maybe because he's been driving it for the past 20 years, but it was horrible.
The mileage was at 290,000km, the steering wheel was peeling, the seatbelts were stringy, the seat covers were torn, and the floors were never cleaned throughout the 2 months on-and-off I was with him.
During my extra lesson with him, I stalled 4 times trying to get up the hill while he furiously unleashed on me. I finally had enough and snapped, I explained that I've never once encountered this in other manual cars, and that it was his worn-out car having issues, because I was genuinely at my breaking point.
He never had air-conditioning turned on the whole time during circuit, and whenever I questioned him, he could never give me a clear explanation. I didn't know it was because he was educationally stunted or he just couldn't come up with an excuse. I say this because he seemed incapable of getting through a single sentence without swearing.
I later learned that it was because his car was so old that running the AC put additional strain on the engine. I don't know why I paid to be put through this torture. It wasn't until I drove other manual cars during my JPJ tests that I realized how much his car had been contributing to my struggles. The combination of the suffocating heat, his incessant screaming, and the condition of his car was so overstimulating that I sometimes contemplated just driving into a pole. jk
He also said he's never seen a stingier student than me all because I opted for a one-hour extra class instead of two hours? What the hell was he on about. I only needed a quick refresh because it had been almost 2 months since my previous one. Again, another brainless comment.
To give a lil more context on the kind of person he is, he once casually told me he shot fireworks at a mosque's speaker because he found it annoying. He also loved telling me about students who he referred to as ‘sohais’ who dropped out after one lesson without paying him, and whose parents subsequently confronted him about his teaching style. I don't know if he expected me to burst out laughing, but I didn't.
All in all, you'd think a man of his age (mid 50s?) would be grown enough to realize he's been externalising his life's misery onto innocent student drivers, but I guess not since he's been teaching for 20+ years. I met a lady in her 40s who went to him and had the same exact experience, so prospective students please read this and think again before choosing YEW ENG KIAT as your agent, unless you like being verbally accosted for being a beginner who, shockingly, doesn't already know how to do everything.
This is some more proof I managed to document: YEW ENG KIAT @ SDC GOOGLE DRIVE
