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
1-7.
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.
4-2
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