You know that you can significantly decrease the odds of causing a crash by staying safe. You can stay off of your phone while you drive, for instance, and you can stay out of the car if you’ve ever been drinking. You can follow the speed limits and just generally try to be a careful driver at all times.
But this doesn’t fully protect you from being injured in a crash. You may not cause one, but you can still be hit by another driver who has made a very serious mistake. There’s nothing that you can do to fully prevent this, but you can reduce the odds through defensive driving.
Defensive driving is all about anticipation
The key to defensive driving is simply to understand that those other drivers around you are going to make mistakes and that you may be able to avoid them if you anticipate errors in advance.
One of the most common defensive driving tips is that you should always be scanning the road around you. You should never feel like a vehicle just appeared out of nowhere and you should never be surprised by the traffic around you. You always want to keep an eye on vehicles pulling out onto the street, those driving behind you, and the oncoming traffic. If you know where those cars are, you can quickly see when something is going wrong.
For instance, imagine that you see a driver starting to roll forward as if they’re going to pull out of a side street before you pass. If you start braking, you may slow down enough that they pull out without incident. If you continue driving at your normal speed, they might have cut you off and caused a crash. Your simple reduction in speed, based on your observations, could prevent severe injuries.
As noted, though, there’s nothing you can do to guarantee you won’t be involved in a crash, so you need to know how to seek financial compensation if someone else injures you.