Car accidents can cause you physical injuries, a burden on your pocket, and then an additional trauma. The thoughts of whether you could’ve prevented this or if it was your fault? We think accidents are bound to happen but there are a lot of ways that you can save yourself.
Reading Time: 5 minutesAccidents happen in a split second, before you could even react or make any reflex actions, the car slams.
Here are a few ways to protect yourself from accidents:
1. Pull into traffic slowly
When you can see the road ahead of you is busy and filled with traffic, be cautious, look around. Continuously look into your side view and rearview mirrors. When wanting to make a turn, look at least twice on each side before you proceed as many times vehicles will come out of nowhere.
2. Watch for red light runners
To protect yourself from those who try to speed on a yellow light, wait a few seconds before you enter an intersection at a green traffic light. Be extra careful when you’re driving next to a truck as the drivers have a blind spot on their right-hand side. The best way to know whether the Truck driver can see you or not is by looking if you can see their side-view mirrors, if you can’t, they can’t see you either.
3. Keep hands on steering wheel
This may seem obvious but a lot of times you’re holding coffee or something with one hand and begin to change to the radio station with the other or using your phone, and you take both hands off the steering wheel, it can cause serious problems as a gust of wind could move your vehicle to the other lane and cause a major accident. Thus, make sure you keep at least one hand on the steering wheel.
4. Look out for kids
Children are naive and can just walk onto the road without looking to see if there’s a car going, so when you’re in a residential area, drive slowly and watch around for kids and animals.
5. Check engine regularly
If you don’t change the oil regularly or make sure your car liquids are filled then your vehicle could fail suddenly in the middle of the road causing a serious accident especially when you’re in speed.
Get your tire pressure checked regularly to make sure you’re not driving with a flat tire. Speeding with a flat tire can cause a serious accident.
6. Look two cars ahead of you
This step will give you more time to react if any problem occurs to the cars ahead of you. For example, if the car ahead of the car in front slams the break due to some reason, you’ll be able to react on time by shifting the lane or pressing the brake to prevent your car from also slamming into the one in front of you.
7. Look backwards when backing out
Don’t solely depend on your car rearview camera or mirrors, look by yourself on the right and left to make sure no car is passing by when you’re backing out. Many of the accidents that happen are in parking lots due to negligence.
8. Maintain a safe distance from the car in front of you
You should have enough space between you and the car in front of you to prevent accidents. A lot of times accidents happen due to tailgating as you don’t get time to react when the car slams its brakes or something.
9. Do not drunk drive
It is obvious that when you’re drunk, you cannot focus properly so it is very dangerous to drive in such a state. Major accidents happen due to drunk driving.
10. Deadly curves
A lot of times when we are in a hurry, we don’t slow down on curves, this can be very dangerous as we can lose control of the car and get into a serious accident that can be life-taking as well. Signs will tell you that a deadly curve is coming ahead so follow it and reduce your speed to save yourself.
11. Follow the road signs
On the sides of the roads, there are many signs that’ll tell you different things like to slow down because the slope is coming or residential area ahead. If you read these signs and follow them, you will be protected from all sorts of accidents.
12. Work in progress on roads
Many times there is a patch on the road that’s being worked on, if you’re driving in speed and don’t look ahead of you on time, you can run into the patch causing damage to your car
13. Rainy days
When it rains, the roads become slippery and water starts gathering up in places. This reduces the grip of the tires on the road and thus speeding would not be a smart decision. So it is important to drive slowly with all lights on to make sure you can avoid all sorts of accidents.
14. Speeding
There are speed limit signs everywhere that should be followed. These signs will tell you what’s the safest speed to drive on that specific road. If you’re driving fast, you won’t have time to react to the situation ahead of you, and boom you’ll be crashing before you could even process what’s happening.
15. Distracted driving
This is a major cause of accidents because when one’s not focused on driving rather on other things like phone calls, children, eating, they’re distracted. So when your attention is not on the road, you’ll obviously get into an accident. So it is necessary to only focus on the road when you’re driving and nothing else.
If you follow all the above-mentioned points, you will minimize the chances of an accident by a huge lot.
