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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" in the Index.)
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.
4-4
Drunken Driving
Death and injury associated with drinking and driving is
a national tragedy. It's the number one contributor to
the highway death toll, claiming thousands of victims
every year.
Alcohol affects four things that anyone needs to drive
a vehicle:
D
Judgment
D
Muscular Coordination
D
Vision
D
Attentiveness.
Police records show that almost half of all motor
-
vehicle
related deaths involve alcohol. In most cases,
these deaths are the result of someone who was drinking
and driving. In recent years, over 17,000 annual motor
-
vehicle
related deaths have been associated with the use
of alcohol, with more than 300,000 people injured.
--
Many adults
by some estimates, nearly half the adult
--
population
choose never to drink alcohol, so they
never drive after drinking. For persons under 21, it's
against the law in every U.S. state to drink alcohol.
There are good medical, psychological and
developmental reasons for these laws.
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