…Holiday Travel Equals Defensive Driving to avoid personal injury
AAA published a news release on Dec. 15 that more than 103 million Americans – the most on record – are expected to participate in holiday travel for the 2016 year-end holidays. “This represents a 1.5 percent increase, or 1.5 million more people traveling, compared with last year,” according to the statement. The year-end holiday travel period is defined as Friday, December 23, to Monday, January 2, 2017.
AAA expects to rescue more than 980,000 motorists over this holiday travel period, with the primary reasons being dead batteries, flat tires and lockouts. Are you out driving during the next week? Be sure to check windshield wipers and inspect tires. Pack an emergency kit containing a flashlight, jumper cables, warning devices, a few snacks and water in case of a breakdown
When driving in heavy holiday traffic, it’s also always best to practice good driving methods, to keep you and your passengers safe. These include leaving following distances to a minimum of five to six seconds “to allow additional braking room should a sudden stop become necessary.”
What about sleep? Have you gotten enough of it? AAA research shows that drivers who miss one to two hours of the recommended seven hours of sleep “nearly double their risk for a crash.” For long trips, drivers should travel at times when normally awake, schedule a break every two hours or every 100 miles, avoid heavy foods, travel with an alert passenger and take turns driving, and avoid medications that cause drowsiness or other impairment, AAA cautions.
Hand in hand with safe driving is the need to practice good defensive driving skills, especially in the Fort Lauderdale area, where drivers navigate a congested I-95, Florida’s Turnpike, Federal Highway and other, local arteries that run between the major metro centers of Fort Lauderdale and Miami. This time of year, everyone is in a hurry and the higher incidents of crashes on the road also compound the probability for personal injury.
If you or someone you know has been injured in a South Florida car crash, consult a personal injury litigation attorney to make sure your case and your rights are handled and recognized in the fairest way, so you receive the compensation you deserve for loss of wages, medical expenses and more.
To avoid injury, or other problems on the road, the American Safety Council’s website, safemotorist.com, discusses the need to drive defensively, and defines defensive driving as “essentially driving in a manner that utilizes safe driving strategies to enable motorists to address identified hazards in a predictable manner. These strategies go well beyond instruction on basic traffic laws and procedures.”
The American Safety Council encourages drivers to enroll in defensive driving classes, where students learn to improve their driving skills “by reducing their driving risks by anticipating situations and making safe well-informed decisions. Such decisions are implemented based on road and environmental conditions present when completing a safe driving maneuver.”
This is certainly something that seems necessary in South Florida, where no one can ever predict a driver zipping across three lanes of traffic to get to an exit, where the smartest move would have been to remain in the right hand lane to begin with – or to make the move to the right lane long before it became absolutely necessary. Drivers weave in and out of lanes at high speeds all the time.
The benefits of practicing defensive driving moves will go a long way in preventing crashes on these busy holiday travel days. If you already have been in an accident you will probably be required to take some sort of driving class; for instance, you will have to complete a basic driver improvement course (Traffic Collision Avoidance Course) if you want to retain your driver license in the following circumstance:
- You were a driver in a crash and are found at fault and someone was transported to the hospital or
- you had two crashes in a two-year period, which resulted in property damage greater than $500.
- Passed a stopped school bus
- Highway Racing
- Highway Racing – Spectator
- Reckless Driving
- Running a red light
More information on this can be found at www.flhsmv.gov/ddl/drivingcourses.html.
The website kidshealth.org also discusses several strategies to stay in control and avoid crashes – it’s good advice for teenagers and adults:
Stay focused. Driving, the site states, “is primarily a thinking task, and you have a lot of things to think about when you’re behind the wheel: road conditions, your speed and position, observing traffic laws, signs, signals, road markings, following directions, being aware of the cars around you, checking your mirrors — the list goes on. Staying focused on driving — and only driving — is critical to safe driving.”
Stay alert. This allows you to react quickly to potential problems. Don’t drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs and don’t pick up the cell phone – these are all bad practices that can affect your reaction time and judgment. In addition, driving while drowsy has the same effect and is one of the leading causes of crashes.
Watch out for other drivers. Be aware of other drivers and always anticipate that someone will make a move that is reckless and unpredictable. How do you know when a driver is liable to make a bad driving move? If they speed past you on the highway, or come up behind you too quickly, or have switched lanes with little space in which to do so, they’re driving recklessly, in which case your defensive driving skills should kick in. Never challenge someone on the road who is driving recklessly.
Have safe holidays and always remember that if the need and urgency arises, a skilled and expert personal injury litigation attorney in Fort Lauderdale is ready to help you navigate the road ahead, to make sure you are covered should you be the victim of a reckless driver.
To avoid injury, learn to drive defensively so that you can identify hazards in a predictable manner. Stay safe out there.
Kidshealth.org: Driving is a thinking task, & you have a lot of things to think about when you’re behind the wheel. Stay focused.
