Nothing comes out of the blue like a car accident. In the blink of an eye, your entire life can be altered—or worse. Even a so-called “minor accident” causes significant disruption to a daily rhythm. Most of what happens out on the road is beyond our control, but there’s a small portion of it that we do manage.
Here are 3 important car accident prevention tips.
Tip #1: Reduce distractions
There are 2 things you can count on in any article about car accident prevention tips. Eliminating distractions—texting, talking on your cell, fiddling with the GPS, etc.—will lead the list. Secondly, the article will make eliminating those distractions sound a lot easier than it actually is.
We won’t fall into the second trap here. There’s no question our technologically-enhanced way of life has changed expectations, especially on availability. If you’re in slow-moving traffic and your spouse calls, it’s hard to ignore the call. Or if you’re running 10 minutes late to pick up a friend and they text you, it seems almost rude not to respond and say you’re on the way. And if you realize you’re lost, it seems almost necessary to mess with the GPS.
But ideally, that conventional wisdom holds out to us is right—we really don’t need to be that available, especially when it puts our safety and that of those around us at risk. We really can wait until we pull off to the side before adjusting the GPS. It’s hard, but we need to strive for the ideal. At the very least, if we come up a little short, we’ll still be safer drivers than we were before.
Tip #2: Get your body into it
Something else that’s easy to do is get physically lazy behind the wheel. Rather than check the blind spot, we give a perfunctory glance to the rearview and side mirrors and either back up or change lanes. If you’re driving the evening commute, you might be tired enough that you don’t feel like doing the head-swerve every time you make a lane shift. If you’re all bundled up on a winter’s morning, getting your body into it when you back out of the driveway seems like a big pain. And it is. But not as big a pain as the accident would be.
Tip #3: Be defensive
What’s bad advice in a relationship is terrific advice for a driver. Always assume the worst and be on the defensive. If you have the right-of-way at the 4-way stop or roundabout, make sure the other drivers are aware of it. If you’re in a residential neighborhood, assume there’s a kid playing nearby. Staying on high alert is your best defense.