You are right, I actually just learnt riding a bike this past February and rode for 2 months, before leaving Pak. In this short timeperiod
I've had several minor accidents: 3 times running into a khota reri - scraping my foot, trying to brake and avoid crashing but having no where to turn so the bike hits the khotacart** and I fly like superman over the bike and manage with scratches - I get angry at him for hogging the entire road and being 'blind' lol, I take his 20kg bags of cements which he was transporting and throw them on the road lol .
And the last time this pagal truck overtakes me in citytraffic at 50-60km/h and when I turn to the left part of the road, this truck moves out and suddenly there's a khota infront of me, not allowing me to brake in time - my front headlight gets shattered :l
At another time in Gujranwala gtroad, this idiot uncle is making a crazy-superwide u-turn, confusing me who's coming from behind where to turn, so I crash into him, shattering his backlight.
Another time, another idiot suddenly crosses the road ahead of me while I've just accellerated from 0 - 30km/h. I try using the front brake but to no avail and I hit him right behind his legs so he and his bike falls sideways (it was kind of funny) and I whined that my brake didn't work.
As for using engine brake, normally when I am to slow down before leaving the mainroad and turning into a residential area, ofcourse I brake and switch to lower gears, but when braking under panic, I have yet to learn this thing. I'm often scolded for lowering the gear at too high speeds - damaging the engine itself, don't know if people actually shift down fast while in a panic at 100km/h on gtroad..to be honest.