Driving mantra Part 6 - Use your eyes properly.

If you really want to stand a chance of driving smoothly, you need to look way further ahead than the car in front. Some people will suggest looking at the vanishing point but I find that takes too much of the near-field away from me. Instead I recommend you watch the car in front of the car in front. That gives you an early warning of what is coming up. If that vehicle suddenly brakes, then it's a good bet the vehicle in front of you will do the same. If you've anticipated this by already slowing down, then you've bought yourself more time and road space to do something about it when the next car in line does the same. The same goes for swerving or emergency moves. Can you see the lane is closed up ahead some way? Then change lanes now. Don't wait for everyone in front to do it - just because they can't see any further ahead than the tip of their own steering wheel doesn't mean you should follow suit.
In a related note, get used to the relative size of pedestrians as you're driving. This sounds a little odd at first but think of this: is that person in the road in front of you an adult who is 100m away or a child who is 30m away? Making the wrong choice could be disastrous and anedotal evidence suggests that this could be a contributing factor to the number of children hit by cars. People are so used to thinking in terms of adult size, that their interpretation of a child standing in the road is actually that it's an adult standing much further away. That mistake fools them into believing they have more space for avoidance than they actually do, often with tragic consequences.
Finally, don't get distracted. Your cellphone isn't that important. Neither is the in-seat DVD, the navigation system or the climate control. You are at the wheel of a 2-ton weapon and when you get distracted you become dangerous. Keep your mind on the job at hand - driving - and if you must take a cellphone call, find somewhere to pull over and do it. Your time and convenience is not worth more than the safety of roads users other than yourself. However simple and safe car manufacturers make it seem, driving is a complex task with life-threatening consquences when you get it wrong. Treat it as such.

Driving mantra Part 5 - Use your indicators and brakes in the right order.

Remember in part 2 I said that your tail lights are your only real form of communication with those behind you? Throw us a bone. If you're going to turn off, use your indicators first. Give those drivers behind you some clue what you're going to do. As you approach the turning, begin to slow down. The drivers behind you (if they're attentive) will begin to slow down too. If you can, gauge your speed so you can turn without coming to a complete stop. It's the analogy from part 1 again - water flowing in a river. If you brake first, then indicate only once you've come to a complete stop, you gave nobody behind you any clue what your intentions were, so now everyone is forced to bunch up and stop behind you instead of being given the option to go around you or slow down and give you room to get out of the way. You're the blockage in the river, creating turbulence.

Driving mantra Part 4 - The proper use of mirrors.

Your mirrors are there for a reason so use them. But understand their limitations and advantages first. Every vehicle has blind spots - areas behind and around you that you can't see into because of the design and position of the windows and mirrors. You can minimise the size of these blind spots by adjusting your mirrors properly - and again this is something that most drivers will find hard to do and even harder to use to start with. Most drivers have their external rear view mirrors adjusted so they can see some of the rear of the car in them. Wrong. Doing this creates the biggest blind spots. To adjust them properly, do this. If you're in a left-hand-drive car, sit in the driver's seat and tilt your head as far to the left as you can - so you're resting on the window. Don't lean your body - just your head. Look in the left external mirror and adjust it so you can just see a little bit of the rear of your car. Now when you sit upright again, in your left mirror, you won't be able to see any of the rear of your own car. Do the same for the right mirror, but tilt your head to the right so your cheek is resting on your shoulder. If you do this properly, as a vehicle passes you on either side, you should be able to see the nose of it in the side rear view mirrors just as the tail end of it disappears from your center mirror. Voila - tiny blind spots. Now this never excuses you for not double-checking. Every motorcyclist is trained to do head-checks and as a car driver you really ought to do the same. If you check your mirrors and you're not 100% sure, do a quick over-the-shoulder check before turning or changing lanes. If more people did this by habit, there would be a lot less side-swipe accidents.
The last thing to know about mirrors is how you drive when you're behind a larger vehicle. It's really super simple. If you can't see the mirrors of the truck in front of you, he can't see you following him. (Plus it means you're way the hell too close to him). Fall back - make sure you can see one if not both of his external rear view mirrors. It gives you more chance to anticipate his moves, and it gives him more chance of seeing you.

Driving mantra Part 3 - Your arms, airbags and steering wheels.

Think about this for a second. Your airbag in your steering wheel can inflate quicker than you can blink. That's a tremendous amount of force involved during the inflation and if your arms are crossed on the steering wheel when this happens, they will be propelled into your face at about 250km/h or 150mph. That means broken arms and a fractured skull. The same is true with side airbags - if you drive in the summer with the window down and your arm out to the side, expect it to be broken or dislocated if the airbag goes off. So what to do? Well you just need to keep this in the back of your mind when you're driving and pick hand positions on the steering wheel that are most appropriate to your situation. Forget that ten-to-two crap - that's old-school mantra for back in the days when cars didn't have power steering. In fact, in a modern car, that's probably the last place you want your hands in the event of an emergency, because it gives you the most leverage on the steering wheel. The last thing you need when you're panicking is to yank down hard on one side of the steering wheel in a car with power steering - it will change direction very abruptly, and in the worst case, induce the car to flip and roll. With the airbag being in the middle of the wheel, you really should avoid resting the palm of your hand on the horn pad, or even your thumbs for that matter. Pick hand positions which are comfortable to you and try not to cross your arms when turning the wheel. It's difficult to do - a habit you typically got into early on and will be hard to break. I still find myself crossing my arms when turning even though I write articles like this all the time.

Driving mantra Part 2 - Don't use your brakes unless absolutely necessary.

This one is difficult to master if you're a nervous driver who is always on the brakes. What you need to understand is that your tail lights are your only real form of communication with those behind you. If you're constantly tapping the brake - or worse - driving with your foot on the brake all the time - it's like crying wolf. The driver behind you has no indication of if you're really slowing down, or just nervously tapping the brake for no reason. When you do need to stop, everyone behind you is conditioned to think you're just nervously fiddling with the brake pedal again, and that's one way to ensure being rear ended.
So what do I mean by "don't use your brakes"? Simple - take your foot off the accelerator. Your car will naturally begin to slow down. If you're not slowing down enough, then you may use the brake. But if you're in motorway traffic and the brake lights come on in front of you, just take your foot off the accelerator first. Chances are the person in front is a nervous braker. 9 times out of 10, a slight slow down on your part will be all that is needed, and because you didn't brake yourself, you've not amplified the problem for those behind you.
Why drive like this? Well - a good deal of traffic jams are known as phantom or shockwave traffic jams. The traffic is stopped for no other reason than a nervous braker. It works like this - someone gets a bit twitchy and instead of simply reducing their speed with the accelerator, they dab the brake. The person behind them does the same, only a fraction harder. Behind and to the sides, people now see two brake lights so they all begin to dab the brakes a little too. Each dab of the brakes slows down the traffic in that lane by a tiny fraction until suddenly, a kilometre behind you, everyone has come to a complete stop. There's your phantom traffic jam. If you were able to observe this from above, it looks like a shockwave travelling backwards through the traffic. In effect - particles bunching up and pulling apart. Remember the river analogy from part 1 of this series? If you want to see this in a mini simulation, this little java application can be tweaked to show the problem very clearly : A Microsimulation of road traffic. Set it to 'ring road' and watch what happens - you don't need to tweak anything but after a few seconds you'll see a shockwave traffic jam form. Think about this next time you're driving.

Driving mantra - a mini series of blog entries.

After a long and detailed conversation with a movie stunt driver recently, I've been spurred on to write a series of articles which I'm going to publish in the blog over the next few weeks. It will be a series talking about driving skills and how you can do your part to help both yourself and all those around you on the road. This isn't "speed kills" or anything like that, but hopefully a series of bite-sized chunks of information to give you something to think about. It might cover topics you already know about. It might make you think "crap - I do that!" or it might make you think a little more about what's going on when you drive. Either way, I hope you find it useful. Feel free to comment as usual.

Part 1 - Traffic is like a flowing river.
This is the best way to think of traffic. Imagine all the cars are particles of water flowing in a river. If you slow down for no reason, you cause an obstruction like a rock being dropped in the river. Water - the other vehicles - now have to either slow down or go around you, which causes turbulence behind you and to the sides. Turbulence slows down the flow and causes problems. The same is true if you are going to pull out in to traffic - make sure there's enough room or you create a blockage and more turbulence. Apart from your own safety and that of others around you, your sole job is to get from A to B without causing any interruption in the flow of the river.