Be a student of driving

Assume. It’s what we do every time we climb behind the wheel of a car. We assume we are going to get to our destination safely.

Odds are you will. Often that creates a complacency that will catch up with you sooner or later.

On average there are six injury accidents, and dozens more “fender-benders” that police do not respond to in Deschutes County daily.

Even a seemingly low-speed accident may cause serious and sometimes life-altering injuries.

How to make sure you don’t eventually end up involved in one of those serious or life-altering accidents? Become a perpetual student of driving.

Whenever you see an accident or hear of one in the news, ask yourself, “what happened and how would I have avoided that accident?”

It takes consistent concentration to become a safe driver. Once habits are established over time your ability to avoid a serious accident will become more pronounced.

For us in Sisters Country, the number one priority is properly assessing conditions and driving safely within them.

We will soon be facing winter driving conditions that will change throughout the day.

You may not get in an accident; however, if a sheriff’s deputy, police officer, or Oregon State Police trooper sees you driving faster than they deem safe for the conditions — even though you are driving within the speed limit — you can be ticketed for violating the basic rule. Even after you slide off the road — that is, if you haven’t become the cause of a serious accident beforehand.

Any aviator will tell you to “keep your head on a swivel.” Same applies to driving. Awareness of traffic all around you is essential to assessing any potential dangers. Those rearview and side mirrors are there for your safety. Often a car coming up quickly behind you may be a danger if you change lanes with nary a glance. This is the perfect storm, a setup for a multi-vehicle accident with oncoming traffic involved.

As you become aware of all the combinations of auto accidents you could be involved in, you’ll have taken the first step to avoiding it ever happening to you.

Again, it doesn’t pay to be right, if you are “dead right.” It happens to innocent people everyday across our country.

By paying attention to how accidents occur, you can think of what you would do if you were presented the same situation. How you’d change the outcome of a potential accident to arrive safely at your destination.

Using pre-visualization, take in the whole scope of a known accident, the seconds before metal meets metal. What did each of the drivers see just before the crash? Did they have eye contact with each other? If not, watch out! What would you have done had you been in that same situation? Run it through your mind over and over again, consider your options until you will automatically respond if a similar situation occurs.

Buying yourself reaction time is critical. The time you see a dangerous situation unfolding and the time it takes for proper or evasive action is on average one second.

That doesn’t seem like much time. At highway speeds you will have covered 88 feet before taking any kind of appropriate action to a perceived threat. In that one second, have you taken full assessment and decided on appropriate action? Or do you just jam on the brakes in panic, when possibly what you should have done is swerved?

Distracted driving is increasing — one of the biggest causes of fatal accidents nationwide.

A driver, distracted for whatever reason, is surprised when they drop off the shoulder of the road. In panic they over correct coming back across the highway into oncoming traffic. In interviewing a young woman for this story, that exact scenario unfolded for her and the driver, her mother-in-law, on the Ochoco Highway, the main road between Redmond and Prineville. A young driver who had left the road and overcorrected was killed in this head-on accident. This young woman and her mother-in-law survived with serious injuries, their stout SUV coming to rest on its top. Five months later they are still recovering from their injuries and multiple surgeries.

This particular kind of accident is terrifying. It’s so sudden that a solution seems improbable. You may not even get that one second reaction time to take evasive action. It has to happen without conscious thought. But you’ve already pre-visualized it happening, right? You know your options.

If you see an oncoming car inexplicably drop onto a soft shoulder, you’re prepared to take immediate action. It may be ending up in a ditch, taking out a fence or even hitting a tree. Hopefully that means you live, and the errant driver lives, never to repeat what would have been a fatal mistake on their part.

Becoming a student of driving, visualizing the myriad of scenarios that could occur may save you from life-alerting injuries or possibly even death.