Holiday drivers can be particularly dangerous. They’re oftentimes stressed—sometimes irritated—and quite often they’re in a rush. This creates a situation where these drivers are oftentimes driving too fast and paying too little attention to what’s going on around them. Whether you’re a pedestrian, another driver on the road or sharing a parking lot with these harried holiday shoppers, you want to exercise a bit of extra caution this time of year. Here are three tips that you can utilize to try to stay safe.
1: Slow Down in Parking Lots
Ideally, people would use the lanes and parking lots and proceed in an orderly fashion to and from their parking spaces. In practice, parking lots tend to work more like a funnel, with every car finding the shortest path to the exit. This means that you have cars coming at you from random directions and that it’s sometimes very difficult to predict what drivers are going to do. Your best defense against this is to simply slow down. If these drivers are going to do something unpredictable, it’s better if you are traveling at a slow speed and in a predictable direction so that they can avoid hitting you.
2: Warm Up Your Car
When temperatures dip, getting in your car creates a significant difference between the temperature in the cab of your vehicle and the outside air. It also introduces moisture into your car and, combined with the warmer temperature, that means your windshield is going to fog up. If you haven’t run your vehicle for a while, sit inside it for a couple of minutes and let it warm up. This is the best way to avoid having your entire windshield fog up when you’re trying to drive in traffic, which is a very dangerous situation.
3: Expect the Unexpected
Defensive driving means expecting other drivers to do things that endanger you. You have to be a lot more defensive than usual during the holidays. Expect that drivers are going to make left turns in front of you, that they’re going to slide up alongside you when there isn’t enough room for them to make it right in the same lane and that they’re going to tailgate you to the point of putting you in danger of being rear ended.
If you are injured by a negligent holiday driver, contact a Fort Worth car accident attorney to see if you have a good reason to file a lawsuit.
