Your Driving,
the
Road, and
Your Vehicle
Defensive Driving
The best advice anyone can give about driving is:
Drive defensively.
Please start with a very important safety device in your
vehicle: Buckle up. See Safety Belts: They Are for
Everyone on page
1-9.
Defensive driving really means “be ready for anything.”
On
city streets, rural roads or freeways, it means
“always expect the unexpected.’’
Assume that pedestrians or other drivers are going
to
be careless and make mistakes. Anticipate what
they might do. Be ready for their mistakes.
Rear-end collisions are about the most preventable of
accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough following
distance. It’s the best defensive driving maneuver, in both
city and rural driving. You never know when the vehicle in
front of you is going
to
brake or turn suddenly.
Defensive driving requires that a driver concentrate on
the driving task. Anything that distracts from the driving
task
-
such as concentrating
on
a cellular telephone call,
reading, or reaching for something on the floor
-
makes
proper defensive driving more difficult and can even
cause a collision, with resulting injury. Ask a passenger to
help do things like this,
or
pull off the road in a safe place
to
do them yourself. These simple defensive driving
techniques could save your life.
Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It’s the number one contributor
to
the highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs
to
drive a
vehicle:
Judgment
Muscular Coordination
Vision
Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half of all motor
vehicle-related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases
these deaths are the result of someone who was
drinking and driving. In recent years, more than
16,000
annual motor vehicle-related deaths have been
associated with the use of alcohol, with more than
300,000
people injured.
4-2
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