Automotive safety technology has advanced by an incredible degree in the last decade. Technology that would’ve been considered impossible in the late 1990s is commonplace today. Even cars at the lowest cost tier can stop themselves, guide you back into your lane, follow a car in front at a close distance, and alert you to pedestrians in the road.
But even with all of that automotive technology, there are still far more lives saved by basic safety equipment and sensible driving tips. A little common sense and a lot of experience are what’s going to help you and the new drivers in your household avoid a collision on the road.
Driving is still the most dangerous thing you do every single day: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, car accidents are the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 1 and 54.
Seat Belts
Here’s a bold statement: There is no piece of safety equipment ever invented that has remotely had more of an impact on driver deaths than the humble safety belt. Simply wearing a seat belt reduces your risk of fatality by 45 percent and your risk of serious injury by 50 percent.
The alarming statistic here is that in 2019, 1,603 people between the ages of 15 and 20 were killed in car crashes, and a staggering 46 percent weren’t wearing a seat belt.
Think about that for a second: If each one of those young people had simply worn a seat belt, 331 of them would have statistically been able to survive the crash. That’s 331 families in 2019 who would not have received the most horrible phone call you could ever imagine.
People not wearing a seat belt are 30 TIMES more likely to be ejected from a vehicle in a crash, essentially negating 100 percent of all the safety advances that have occurred in the last half-century. It is literally the thing that’s going to save most of us from death and serious injury.
Back seat, front seat, it doesn't matter—convince yourself and your kids to wear a belt at all times.
Driver Training
The United States as a whole does a horrible job training drivers. First of all, Driver’s Education classes are voluntary. Yes, you have to wait until you're 17 or 18 in most states to obtain a driver’s license, but you can still get one with no other training than what it takes to pass a simple road test. As any experienced driver knows, there's far more to safe driving than a basic knowledge of the rules of the road.
Sadly, "Driver’s Ed" is no longer a formal part of the high school curriculum. It's now a question of private education, and the cost can be a significant barrier for lower-income families. For example, in Massachusetts, the cost of driver’s ed typically hovers around $250 for the classroom portion alone and another $500 for the 12 hours of in-car instruction. That’s $750 before you pay the fees to obtain a license, pay for insurance, buy a car, and meet all the other necessary costs for getting yourself to a minimum wage job.
Nevertheless, training teaches teen drivers valuable driving skills. Using Massachusetts as an example again, the state not only requires that teen drivers spend 12 hours of time behind the wheel with an instructor, but it also requires that parents take a two-hour class and observe the student driving for a minimum of 40 hours. That’s a significant amount of driving time, and it really helps teens to gain some much-needed experience behind the wheel. It also gives their parents a sense of their teen's driving safety and whether or not more instruction is needed.
Watch Your Blind Spots
A lot of modern vehicles are going to partially do this for you, but don't rely on that. Not only should you be comfortable with using your side-view mirrors and your rear-view mirror, you should be looking over your shoulder when you change lanes to be sure that nobody is hanging out in your blind spots. And don't forget to use your turn signals to ensure that your fellow motorists are well aware of your intentions.
Vehicle Maintenance
It is breathtaking to walk through any office parking lot in America and simply witness the condition and quality of the tires on the vehicles parked within. Do it sometime. You’ll see $50,000 SUVs shod with tires that have all the tread of a length of baloney sitting in a deli case.
And that’s the lack of maintenance you can see. In 2017, AAA conducted a survey that suggested that 64 million Americans couldn’t pay for a significant auto repair without going into debt. In 2021, Utire—an online purveyor of used tires—surveyed American drivers and found that more than a quarter of car owners admitted to driving with bald or worn-out tires (27.3 percent). A frightening 25.9 percent admitted to ignoring underperforming brakes for more than 30 days.
You really have two absolutely critical pieces of equipment that keep you from plowing into the car in front of you: The brakes that stop the car, and the tires, which provide a contact patch that allow the brakes to work.
Ignoring either one of those items for any length of time will end badly. Worn tires on a cold, rainy night will cause the vehicle to hydroplane, effectively eliminating any contact your vehicle has with the road surface. Problems with either the hydraulic system or the pads, rotors or calipers will increase your stopping distance dramatically, basically transforming a dry road surface into glare ice.
Vehicle maintenance can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. A new set of wiper blades that allow you to see clearly in bad weather only costs around $20. Checking your tire pressure is free. And deferred maintenance can be way more expensive than picking away at the smaller repairs immediately. Bad shocks can lead to broken springs and broken ball joints, which can add up to a much greater expense than just replacing the shocks. Learn your maintenance schedule, and check in with your mechanic regularly if you’re experiencing any performance issues.
Winter Tires
You might think you can ignore this one based on where you live, but in any given winter, snow falls on 49 of the 50 states. And winter tires are about a lot more than just snow. They’re about the ability to grip the asphalt in cold weather and bad weather conditions.
In general, a “summer tire,” which is what you’ll find on most performance vehicles in 2021, is only able to grip the road effectively in temperatures above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Applying a healthy dose of the brake pedal on a cold, wet morning, you'll find the summer hoops on your BMW X5 M50i will skate across the surface of the road like it’s on ball bearings, regardless of the fact that it has all-wheel drive.
Boston Mobile Tire provided an excellent video explaining the differences between those summer tires and winter tires, which are most effective at temperatures below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. But the tire provider also covered the difference between all-season tires—which represent about 90 percent of the tires equipped on new cars sold in the United States—and new “all-weather” tires. This new class of tires has the grippy rubber compound of a winter tire, designed to grip the road at under 50 degrees, but with a tread pattern that covers the gap between an all-season tire and a dedicated winter tire.
If you live somewhere where winter driving is a consideration, your best bet is to have dedicated winter tires on a spare set of wheels and swap over right around Halloween. If you’re living in an area where snow isn’t much of a factor, but temperatures drop below 50 on a regular basis, a set of all-weather tires would be a great option for replacing the all-seasons that came on your car from the factory.
If you’re driving around in bad weather with summer tires? Please stop it.
Pay Attention To Road Signs
It's amazing how unconscious we are about road signs. Stop signs, yield signs, and others that are supposed to warn you about construction areas, speed limits, and right-of-way conventions routinely get ignored in favor of tuning radio stations or adjusting the air conditioning. Modern cars have helped a bit with road sign alerts in head-up displays, but the job of watching out for these signs is ultimately up to you.
Plan Ahead
Much of the advanced safety technology available on a new vehicle in the 2022 model year is based on providing you enough time to react. Either by grabbing your attention with flashing lights and audible alerts or by taking evasive action on its own, advanced safety technology is looking further down the road, predicting a potentially dangerous situation, and providing you extra time to react.
Whether you have this technology or not, you can help yourself to avoid a potential crash by planning further ahead. This becomes even more important as we age. One peer-reviewed study of over 3000 video game players showed that players aged 39 with years more experience were essentially on the same level as players aged 24 with much less experience, simply because the older players’ reaction times were an average of 150 milliseconds slower. The age of the average driver in the U.S. is 47. We need to give ourselves more time to react.
There are two simple ways to allow yourself more time to react: Obey speed limits and don't tailgate. In general, at 30 miles per hour, you need between 20 and 40 feet just to react to what’s happening in front of you. Then you need another 120 to 130 feet to bring the car to a complete stop. Double your speed to 60, and all of those numbers double—you'll need between 40 and 80 feet just to react, and 240 to 260 feet to complete a stop. Be aware that the safe following distance changes with speed and conditions.
Looking further down the road helps to predict not only what’s going on in front of you, but also what’s going on in front of the car in front of you. Brake lights two cars ahead should be a pretty strong indication that you should start braking before the guy on his cell phone ordering Pizza Chef in front of you does.
In motorcycle training, this technique is known by the acronym SIPDE:
Scan – Search the road ahead at a distance of about 1.5 city blocks.
Identify – Don’t just look at a situation, identify what it is and how it can impact your course.
Predict – Interpret the likelihood of that kid on the bicycle darting out into traffic.
Decide – Looking further down the road gives you more options than just plowing into the car in front of you. Choose which path away from the incident you’re going to take.
Execute – Once you’ve made your decision, get it done.
Be Prepared
Nothing is foolproof, and it's possible that you might wind up by the side of the road through no fault of your own. This will be a lot easier to stomach if you have the supplies to either get yourself back on the road or make yourself comfortable while you wait for help. Emergency kits are not just for road trips!
Sometimes things go wrong, but most of the time, we’re buckled up, keeping an eye on maintenance, choosing the right tires, looking further down the road, and taking every opportunity we can to get additional driver training. Anything you can do to make these safety tips a part of your daily driving practice is going to help.
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