Being Aware of Your Surroundings When You Drive By Brenda Williams At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

As many of us are already aware, driving in and of itself can be an extremely dangerous and daunting task at times. Typically it is not your driving that you have to worry about but everyone else and the driving habits (or lack of) that they bring to the roadways. This is why it is extremely important that you remain vigilant when you are behind the wheel of a vehicle. What do I mean by this? You need to cut out any unnecessary distractions.

You can begin to cut out other distractions by getting to know what kind of a driver you are. For instance, are you the kind of person that has difficulty walking and chewing gum at the same time? If so, then you probably will want little to no distractions at all in your vehicle while you are driving! If you know that having any more than one person in your car will distract you, then you will need to work especially hard on keeping your focus because it is inevitable that you will have to transport someone somewhere in the course of your life. More car accidents are caused by people talking to another person in the car (I.e. the soccer moms who are turning their entire bodies around in the driver seat to address their children(s) needs in the backseat) or those people who are busy having cell phone conversations.

The issue with people being distracted while driving due to having phone conversations has gotten so bad that the state of New York passed a law which prohibits any person from having a cell phone conversation unless they are using a hands-free device- but even then, the very fact that you are having a conversation with someone else can still be distracting because you are trying to gather information and provide some sort of emotional response..all of which takes your focus away from the road. As a somewhat related aside, whenever my brother and I are driving with my mom in the driver's seat- we automatically know that she is going to be distracted. The other day, she was so busy looking at me and talking, that I had to tell her several times that the light was green.

Being aware of your surroundings goes far beyond talking to other people though. For instance, I always talk about leaving yourself enough stopping room when you are behind someone else on the road because you never know when you are going to have to do an evasive manuever to get yourself out of dangers way. An example of this was back when I was in college. I was stopped at a light behind another person when I noticed that the person behind me was approaching me at a high rate of speed despite the fact that the light was red. I decided that it was time to get out of dodge and quickly maneuvered myself into the other lane. Seconds after I did this, the person behind me slammed on their brakes at the last minute and swerved slightly out of the lane, narrowly missing the person I had just been stopped behind. Had I stayed where I was, I would have been involved in a serious car accident.

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