Buffalo Personal Injury Lawyer NewsHow To Be A Safer Driver
Driving is one of the riskiest things you do every day. Many careless actions, such as speeding, giving in to distractions, and fatigued driving, can all significantly increase your risk of crashing. Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol is especially dangerous. Fortunately, there are simple steps that you can take to keep yourself and others safe.
Five Things You Can Do To Be A Safer Driver
- Concentrate on the Road: You may have been driving for years or even decades and feel like you can do it without much thought. However, we cannot stress the importance of always keeping your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, in a recent year alone, distracted driving killed 3,142 victims. Therefore, avoiding all distractions, like eating or drinking, scrolling through social media, talking on your cell phone, and applying makeup behind the wheel, is crucial.
Road rage refers to a driver’s intense anger, typically sparked by another’s provoking behavior and manifested through aggressive or violent actions. In recent years, road rage incidents have hit record highs throughout the United States. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), experiencing aggressive driving has become all too common, with approximately 80 percent of motorists reporting at least one incident within the past month.
While car crashes can happen just about any time, the risk of being involved in a collision significantly increases in bad weather. In fact, bad weather conditions are notorious for causing devastating car accidents throughout Western New York. Heavy rain, intense snowfall, poor visibility, and slick roads can all easily cause you to lose control of your vehicle. Driving in poor weather conditions is even more dangerous when drivers fail to take proper safety precautions to prevent unnecessary accidents. 
Discover the hidden epidemic sweeping our nation’s roads, threatening the lives of countless innocent individuals: drowsy driving. In a sleep-deprived society where the average American gets less than 7 hours of rest each night, the consequences can be dire. Astonishingly, despite the universal understanding that driving while drowsy is a recipe for disaster, a staggering 40% of drivers openly confess to embarking on their journeys in a fatigued state. Brace yourself for an even more alarming statistic: a shocking 20% of motorists, in the past year alone, have admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel.
Operating a commercial vehicle is vastly different and more challenging than driving a passenger vehicle. Large trucks weigh up to 80,000 pounds and are often 30 times heavier than the average passenger vehicle. The massive size and weight of semi-trucks drastically exacerbate the impact and damage they can inflict in the unfortunate event of an accident. The stopping distances required for these enormous vehicles are considerably longer. Consequently, obtaining a commercial driver’s license is imperative because of the additional training and skills needed to operate a semi-truck safely.