ANTICIPATION - A DRIVER'S ROAD SMARTS

DRIVE SMART - DRIVE SAFE DRIVE WITH PACKS
PACKS =Patience-Awareness-Courtesy-Knowledge-Skill

Does your head swivel when you drive? Do you have roving eyes? Do you look at your mirrors in a set routine? How about looking out your side windows with regularity? If you answered “Yes” to all those questions, you are a race car driver. Or maybe a professional driver. Hey ladies and gentlemen, learn to answer “Yes” to all those questions and you and your cars won’t get messed up. You will see what’s going on around you and you will be able to ANTICIPATE danger. Get it?

Driver anticipation provides safety on the roads. Webster’s says that anticipation means, “Visualization of a future event or state; a prior action that takes into account or forestalls a later action.” Wow! If drivers could visualize a crash coming long enough before it happens, they would be prepared to take some action to forestall it or prevent it. Wouldn’t that be great. Let’s work on beefing up our “anticipation” skills.

Visualizing or looking ahead means not looking only at the vehicle directly ahead of you, it means looking at several vehicles ahead of you. It means getting whatever information you can from the vehicles ahead of you, from the stop lights and signal lights of all the vehicles that are ahead of the vehicle ahead of you. The sooner you learn the intentions of the drivers ahead of you, the more able you are to anticipate what might happen and safely prepare your response. Looking ahead also means seeing what the drivers ahead of you see, like a traffic blockage or flashing emergency vehicle lights, and you can move to a faster lane more before traffic piles up.

Many rear-end crashes occur when a driver sees a danger ahead and slams his foot on the brakes .When that driver sees a dog in the road that you can’t see and reacts suddenly, driver in vehicle #2 may react in time to his brake -lights but the driver in vehicle #3 doesn't have enough time to react. Not seeing or using the first car’s brake-lights chops fractional seconds off the available reaction time of each driver in line to respond to the situation. If driver #3 saw car #1 brake-lights go on, that would provide a time margin equal to that of driver #2. You can best do that by keeping slightly to the left or right of the car ahead of you. Make him your dance partner and follow his moves.

For whatever reason, most drivers prefer driving in a cluster. It’s called “synchronicity.” I’ll write more about that in a future column. But for now, be aware that synchronicity adds to the dangers of driving at any time. Looking ahead of the vehicle directly in front of you becomes even more important when you are driving in heavy traffic at high speeds. You need more warning and more lead time because of the speed and the domino effect of an event occurring in the cluster ahead of you. By seeing the signal lights and brake-lights of the cars ahead of you, you can often determine what actions you must take in response to those signals. The earlier you respond, the earlier the vehicles behind you will also respond and the safer your rear end will be.

Anticipation requires awareness and awareness requires knowledge. If you do not know that standing barrels are less likely to roll off the back of a truck than barrels stacked lying down, you cannot anticipate or weigh the possibilities of an accident happening. For the record, never drive close behind a truck with barrels or any round objects stacked sideways lying down. And, if you are unaware of illegal road racing taking place around you, you will not anticipate the high level of danger road races bring to the normal driving public and move to safety. More knowledge about potential road dangers leads to greater awareness and greater anticipation. (See the partial list in the “Rules” article below.)

One way to prepare for dangerous road situations is always to have an “out.” Here are some example “outs” that a safe, aware, anticipatory driver thinks of as she is driving. Think about where you can steer your vehicle if the car in front of you stopped suddenly. Is there room to the right of you or are there vehicles there? Is there a flat shoulder on your left or right? Is there room between the car ahead in your lane and the vehicles to the right or left of that car for you to squeeze in if you can’t stop in time? Or can you slam sideways into the vehicle to your right or left rather than into the car ahead of you? Sideswiping, even against trucks or buses, is substantially more safe than head-on or rear end collisions.

Since the introduction of smoked glass in car windows, a significant measure of anticipation safety has been lost. It is impossible to see through smoked glass rear windows. Often, you could get information about the intentions of the driver ahead of you by looking at his head motions. When he looks at his rear-view mirror or the side-view mirrors, that movement of his head may be an indicator of intent to change lanes or make turns. With smoked glass windows, it is impossible to see what the driver ahead of you sees directly in front of him. Other anticipation information you might get from vehicles ahead of the car in front of you is also lost.

Do you value privacy over safety? If you were writing the laws, would you prohibit smoked glass rear windows? I would. One day, hopefully soon, smoked rear windows will be outlawed.

Uncle PACKSman

Quick Tip: Properly inflated tires for the time of year give you the highest level of traction for a quick stop. "FALL - LOWER" "SPRING - HIGHER"