What is defensive driving?

Author: Chris Hawkins

Defensive Driving is a manner that can be utilized to practice safe driving strategies which enables drivers to address obstacles in a most predictive manner. These strategies are beyond the instructions of standard traffic laws and procedures. With a proper defensive driving knowledge drivers can improve their driving skills and the probability of risks reduced as they anticipate tough situations and make the right decision instinctively. These decision making abilities help them read the on road environmental condition and risks that come along with the situation.

Why Taking a Defensive Driving Course?

There are many benefits of taking a defensive driving course. It mostly depends on each state own traffic laws. These benefits often include Traffic ticket dismissals, and reduction in Insurance rates. Even in some states, taking a defensive driving course can benefit you up to 10% reduction in insurance rates for a period or 3 to 5 years. Since different states use different laws and policies, so the defensive driving course hours also changes according to that. The Texas defensive driving course is a 6 hour long program. In some places a defensive driving course is a classroom type of concept. But that would require students to visit the classroom at a particular time to attain the class. You can also take online courses from institutes like Texas Defensive Driving School, which is completely based on videos and animations. Once you have taken the course, you can complete in a set of 6 hours, for a period of 90 days. It’s your choice, if you want to provide 6 hours at a time or do it as per your own convenience.

What’s included in Texas Defensive Driving School?

The content of a basic defensive driving course is mostly regulated by the state education academy and they are mostly based on the state traffic laws. But still there are certain common programs can be found in each state defensive driving program.

Traffic Crashes:

Losses from car crashes are tragic and they have hard impact on person’s life as well as it has a deep social impact. A report says about 40,000+ people die every year because of car accidents with over 3 million injuries. As per the surveys conducted by various independent authorities, it has been reported that about 35%-40% of such accidents were caused because of alcoholic reason and about 30% because of over speeding.

The objective of a defensive driving course is to reduce the risk of fatal accidents by educating the students about immediate judgment making and driving with excessive caution. Having a defensive driving course helps save you lot of money spend to fix the car after crashing and in worse case it would help you save your own life.

Human Factors – DUI

Driving under the influence of Alcohol and Drugs can cause server crashes. A common component of all defensive driving courses is to educate about the role and effects of different kind of drugs on human mind and body. Taking drugs while driving can cause disastrous to the driver. The defensive driving course educates the students about the blood alcohol level, judgment changes affected by the drugs and alcohol, consequences if found guilty of using drugs or alcohol while driving.

State Traffic Laws

Every state has their own traffic laws. It’s important for a driver to know the state traffic laws. Especially defensive driving course is taken in United States mostly for speeding or traffic law violation, so relearning the traffic laws can help turn a traffic offender into a good defensive driver.

Safety Equipment

Even if you are a aware driver, but some time accidents may happen accidentally and you might have no control over it. But wearing a safety belt can avoid some serious injuries. Items such as Air bags, child safety seats, head rests all such stuffs serve to protect drivers and passengers to reduce risks of injury or death in an event of crash.

Crash Prevention Techniques

The only way to avoid a potential hazard while driving is to recognize the danger before it’s too late. A standard defensive driving course includes a lot of information about crash prevention techniques.

  • Scanning the roadway and adapting to surroundings
  • Employing the two-second rule for following distances
  • Knowing your vehicle’s stopping distance
  • Being aware of reaction distance
  • Environment hazards
  • Vehicle emergencies
  • Sharing the road
  • Passing and necessary clear distance
  • Right of way
  • Speed adjustments and railroad crossings

Psychological Factors

There are many things on road, which could affect the driving of a driver. Some of them are surely not in the control of the driver, but still if the driver would be efficient psychologically, then they would know what to look for and how to handle the situation.

Defensive driving course helps improving positive attitudes in the students so that they focus more on the driving task. Having negative psychological factors such as stress, fatigue, road rage or emotional distress can cause severe crashes on road. A defensive driving course provides you with positive energy, so that you can concentrate more when you are behind the wheels.

Dynamics of a Crash

There is always some science behind all crashes. A crash is a result of failed series of events that could be preventable. The severity of crash depends upon the speed, place of impact and size of object being impacted. However in some cases one vehicle hitting another vehicle or object is not the only collision that may occur. The concept of second collision is that the driver hitting the steering wheel, windshield or any other object within the car. In such cases not wearing a seat belt can be really dangerous.

A defensive driving course helps the drivers to address the issues by listed all the elements that can avoid a second collision.