|
Using Fun and Safe Defensive Driving Techniques |
|
Written by Jerry Malcolm
|
|
It might seem that when you think about driving, the opposite of safe driving is fun driving. Of course, when you can drive fast and take corners tight on a racetrack or some controlled environment, that is fun. So we sometimes associate unsafe and even reckless driving with what it means to have fun on the road.
There is a misconception that defensive driving is all about driving 20 miles below the speed limit, white knuckles on the steering wheel and veering away from traffic at all times. In reality, defensive driving may call for the most well developed and sophisticated driving skills you can develop. It is no small challenge to head out on the road knowing there are people who are driving poorly, people who are distracted or under the influence of alcohol or people who may just be plain nuts out there driving cars on the same roads that you are using. It takes tremendous powers of observation and the ability to constantly be drafting and redrafting defensive driving strategies with each changing driving situation.
In many ways, defensive driving is tremendously offensive. Your defensive driving skills give over to you the ability to control what is happening around you. But instead of dominating the road, which would put you and other drivers in danger, you are using your impressive defensive driving skills to stay out of harms way and to keep other drivers with poorer judgment and skills than you have from putting you in a dangerous driving situation.
You will constantly be looking around and planning for how to handle any situation that may endanger you, your car and your passengers when you are driving defensively. In many ways, this turns the act of driving into an art not unlike playing a game of chess. Your goal is to get where you are going without being "tagged", where tagging is an accident or even a near miss of an accident or road emergency. When you "win" and avoid trouble on the road, sometimes using some pretty nifty driving skills, that can be as much fun as driving on that racetrack at a high rate of speed.
A good example are the evasive maneuvers you may use in high speed traffic such as urban freeway driving. You may be speeding along at 60-70 miles an hour in the middle of dozens of other vehicles of every make and size and type all maneuvering for position and entering and leaving traffic around you all the time. This is no time for any timid form of defensive driving. Very often, the best maneuver if trouble begins to happen in that kind of situation are aggressive evasive action.
For example, you are driving in that urban freeway situation moving fast. Suddenly you realize that you are pinned in on both sides and a driver behind you is behaving aggressively about wanting to pass. This can easily happen even if you are driving at the top of the speed limit or even over the speed limit. You cannot maneuver backward or to either side. This is a dangerous situation because if anything happens with any of those vehicles near your own, at these speeds the outcome can be disastrous and possibly fatal.
The best defensive tactic is to get yourself out of that situation. Here is where you might use the power of your engine to speed up quickly to get away from the cars or trucks on either side of you. You accelerate aggressively so the other drivers know you are making a move and they don’t try to race you. As soon as you put one of the other vehicles safely behind you, you move to the right or the left to let the speeder go by you. Then you secure a safe driving situation where you can keep an escape route nearby at all time and resume driving the speed limit.
Defensive driving instruction is designed to equip you to make those kinds of judgment calls every time you go out into traffic. Instead of using your car as a recreational or offensive tool, you see it as a fine tuned defensive tool that you will expertly use to beat those poor drivers out of the chance of putting you in danger. And as you drive like that day after day and month after month and continue to enjoy a perfect driving record, it can be great fun to know that it is no accident that you know how to use your defensive driving skills well. It is because you took the time to learn those highly skilled defensive driving skills and then you practice them literally every day of your life.
|
