It is important for any driver to know about defensive driving techniques. This is vital when we want to ensure safety during long trips. Road accidents can be reduced significantly by implementing defensive driving habits. Dangers of driving can be significantly reduced fatal accidents that can cause death and total destruction of our cars. In this case, we should make sure that we are able to be significantly safer while on the road. Although roads may appear to be simplistic, we shouldn’t be fooled by them. We should focus and pay attention to any task of driving. This should be an obvious rule for defensive driving. We often see people who use smartphones while driving. Regardless of what we do, we should avoid splitting our attention.
It is not safe to put our driving task on auto pilot. We should be totally focused with what we do and ignore other tasks. Operating the 2-ton box of metal, rubber and plastics will require you to have full focus. If we are unable to remember what we do a mile back, then it means that we are driving on auto pilot and we have higher risk of having accident. During auto pilot stage, our response rate is impaired and reduced. We should be able to properly react to any new stimuli. We should look for ways to pay more attention while we are driving. We should avoid chatting on our smartphone, while the car is still moving. When our car is moving quickly, we shouldn’t avert our eyes, even for just a few seconds.
We should also avoid talking with the passengers. If we do this, we could put our lives and others’ in grave danger. Before traveling, we should be aware of where we are going and how we could get there. This should be quite easy to do. Google Maps and other mapping platforms can be used to determine the best route to reach our destination. Google Street View could further show us visually about the condition of the roads and intersections. We need to do this even for short trips, if we don’t know about the route and our destination. By learning properly, we don’t need to constantly look at the phone or navigational equipment. If we want to get focused, we should also make sure that we have proper physical conditions.
As an example, we should avoid being hungry. We should stop and eat, while we are tired and hungry. However, it is important that we don’t overeat. Eating too much may cause gastrointestinal problems and they could distract us. After eating at moderate quantity, we may rest for 15 minutes to further improve our condition. We should pull over and rest when we are tired. In any case, we shouldn’t gamble with our lives, even if we are in a hurry. Many people think that they are perfectly fit. Unfortunately, they nod off while driving at 2AM, causing their car to flip over. We should be aware driving can be a hypnotic task and after an hour of seeing monotous highways, we may start to think about other things.
