Every Virginia Beach resident can get behind the idea of car accident prevention. These unfortunate events have destroyed many lives by causing permanent injuries, and cut many lives short. The problem is that most drivers in Virginia take their safety for granted after spending years driving on the road without incident, and they don’t even take the simplest of precautions to prevent crashes from happening.
At the very least, we’d like to see every Virginia Beach driver do the following things for their safety:
- Don’t linger in the fast lane: The left lane should only be used temporarily for passing. In fact, the majority of accidents on the highway happen to drivers riding in the left lane. When you’re driving in the right lane, you’re going to have more routes available to you if you have to maneuver around a potential obstacle.
- Always scan ahead: If you’re not looking about 10 to 12 seconds ahead of you when you’re driving, you’re missing out on the ability to warn yourself in advance of a potential accident. By scanning ahead you’ll have extra time to avoid obstacles ahead of you.
- Every driver has a blind spot: Not every driver can see you through a side or rear-view mirror. Most cars have some kind of a blind spot, and your car will have one too. If you change lanes, you want to make sure you’ve seen what’s there, and you also want to make sure that the drivers around you have seen your new position.
- Take a race car driving course: This might sound crazy, but race car drivers always know the limits of their vehicles. In a race car class, you can push a vehicle to its limits, know what it feels like when you spin out of control and learn how to regain control again. Most drivers never get to experience these extreme situations until they’re about to get into a crash, but a race car driver — and anyone else with experience driving a car to its limits — will have a better chance of staying in control during extreme conditions.
At The Dickerson & Smith Law Group, we want to give you a wake-up call. Your safety is never insured when you’re sharing the road with reckless and negligent drivers. Keep every safety precaution in mind to prevent a car crash from happening.