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How to Avoid Car Accidents: 10 Preventive Measures You Can Take
Car accidents can have truly horrible consequences. Check out these tips on how to avoid car accidents, and learn what you can do to prevent them.
Being a safe driver means doing all the things you learned when you were first driving. Do those things your driver’s education teacher and your dad taught you. Remember the long list of ways for how to avoid car accidents?
Yet, as drivers get more comfortable behind the wheel, they also get more complacent. This means as a driver, you start to get a little more careless.
Most of the time your driving is still okay, but what happens when you aren’t practicing good car safety? Car accidents happen. In fact, approximately 3,700 people die in car accidents daily.
It’s time for a refresher course from your driver’s education course, way back to your teenage years. Read on to learn tips on how to avoid car accidents.
- Avoid Distracted Driving
In today’s technology, fast food, live out of your car world, a lot can be going on while you are driving down the road. It’s important to keep your brain and eyes focused on what’s happening driving down the road.
Ways to avoid distracted driving:
- Only talk on your phone if it’s hands-free
- Pullover if you need to address your kids behind you
- Don’t eat and drive. Park to eat your Big Mac
Participate in safe practices with your phone. No texting and driving. If you’re in an accident, your auto insurance company can figure out if you were texting at the time of the accident.
- Watch Your Speed
Speed limits are posted for a reason. Likewise, speed is a factor in many auto accidents.
Pay attention to warnings asking you to slow down based on conditions up ahead like a sharp curve in the road.
The faster you are going, the longer it also takes you to stop. So, if you are speeding and need to stop suddenly, there’s a greater risk for an accident.
- Avoid Tailgating
The truth is you can’t control what the car in front of you is doing. If you drive right on their tailgate and they suddenly or unexpectedly hit the brakes, you are ripe for a fender bender.
Leaving plenty of room between you and the car in front of you means you are driving more defensively and have more time if you need to hit the brakes.
- Driving While Tired
You know that awful feeling at the end of a long workday when you are sleepy and can’t wait to get home. Or you’ve been driving for a long time without stopping and your eyelids start to get heavy.
This is a dangerous way to drive. If you are sleepy, stop and take a break. Get some fresh air and stretch.
Falling asleep at the wheel or even starting to doze off and jerking your steering wheel is bound to cause a car accident.
- Keep Your Hands on the Wheel
As an experienced driver, you might have seen the crazy driver going down the road, cheeseburger in one hand and their phone in the other. And you think, who’s controlling the steering wheel?
This is a pretty simple and easy safety tip. You need at least one hand, and two is better, on the steering wheel when you’re going down the road.
- Stoplight Practices
Car accidents often happen at or around stoplights. Several scenarios can cause this.
If you’re at a light waiting for it to turn red and it does, your instinct is to immediately hit the gas and get going. But what happens if coming from the other direction, you have another distracted driver who decides to try to squeak through the light.
Or they decide they can go through the yellow light before it turns red and they don’t make it.
On the flip side, you don’t want to be the driver who is making any of those careless decisions and trying to beat the light before it turns red.
- Look Ahead
As a driver, you want to be aware of not just where you are driving right this second, but also at what’s coming up.
As a driver, you should be looking at what obstacles you will be coming up to as you keep going.
Are there stopped cars? Are kids playing up ahead? Is there a stoplight up ahead? Do the lanes narrow up ahead?
Knowing what you are driving into helps you to anticipate potential problems and also avoid them.
- Look Back When Backing Out
If you are backing out of a parking place, you want to physically turn your head in each direction too. Don’t solely rely on your mirrors to do the trick.
You want to be sure another car isn’t also backing out at the same time. Perhaps another car is about to come whipping down the row to grab an open spot. Their thinking about scoring a parking place, not the fact that you might also be about to back out.
Your mirrors might not also pick up pedestrians about to walk in your path.
- Pulling Into Traffic
In driver’s education, you might have learned to stop, look, and listen for potential dangers.
When pulling into traffic, proceed slowly. Make sure there is plenty of room for you to not only pull out safely but then to also accelerate up to the speed of the other cars.
- Watch Posted Signs
As drivers, it’s easy to get so comfortable behind the wheel, that you miss or overlook warning signs.
Signs are posted to help drivers avoid potential risks and accidents. Pay attention to them.
This might be especially true of unusual signs that go beyond speed limit signs. You might see a sign for a sharp curve ahead or a sign warning that animals frequently cross up ahead.
Know How to Avoid Car Accidents
Knowing how to avoid car accidents is an important part of remaining a safe driver. Nobody wants to get into a car accident. Accidents happen because people get careless or don’t pay attention to the road.
Avoid being that driver and practice safe habits to stay accident-free.
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