Defensive Driving- Page 171

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Defensive Driving

The best advice anyone can give about driving is: 
Drive defensively.

Please start with a very important safety device in your
vehicle: Buckle up. (See “Safety Belts” in the Index.)

Defensive driving really means “be ready for anything.”
On city streets, rural roads or freeways, it means
“always expect the unexpected.”

Assume that pedestrians or other drivers are going to 
be careless and make mistakes. Anticipate what they
might do. Be ready for their mistakes.

Rear

-

end collisions are about the most preventable of

accidents. Yet they are common. Allow enough
following distance. It’s the best defensive driving
maneuver, in both city and rural driving. You never
know when the vehicle in front of you is going to brake
or turn suddenly.

Defensive driving requires that a driver concentrate on
the driving task. Anything that distracts from the driving
task 

--

 such as concentrating on a cellular telephone

call, reading, or reaching for something on the 
floor 

--

 makes proper defensive driving more 

difficult and can even cause a collision, with resulting
injury. Ask a passenger to help do things like this, or
pull off the road in a safe place to do them yourself.
These simple defensive driving techniques could save
your life.