The Thinking About Safe Driving

The Thinking About Safe Driving – What makes a safe driver? Is it excellent vehicle control? Years of
experience? The safety features of your car? As a police officer, I along with my colleagues have
investigated numerous crashes and have very rarely come away thinking that the crash was caused
by any of the above. What I have learnt from teaching new drivers, mentoring police officers with
policing driving skills and analysing crashes is that there is a particular thought process we need to
apply constantly to drive safely. This thought process involves, scanning, identifying risk and making
a decision.

 

 

Scan -Simply failing to look when opening your car door, changing lanes or at a stop sign can cause
you to crash. Poor spatial/driving environment awareness means that you can miss identifying a
potential risk leading to a crash.

 

 

Risk – We may miss seeing a potential risk or we see/know the risk but carry on regardless. You’re
running late so you floor it through a late amber light, you look down to read a text message, you’re
only going around the corner no need to wear your seatbelt.

 

 

Decision -Our unintentional or intentional decisions around risk can make us careless or downright
dangerous road users. Road rules, road markings and signs are designed to enable us to make safe
decisions while driving. Though remembering and applying all this information correctly has it’s own
challenges.

 

 

While Police emergency driving we need to exceed speed limits, go through red traffic lights
sometimes on the wrong side of the road. We do this scanning in hyper vigilant mode, adjusting
speed and direction, processing numerous risks to rapidly make and safe go/ don’t go decisions
while keeping all around us safe.

 

Being a safe driver revolves around using the massive computing power of our brains. In car
technology with all it’s sensors, radars and cameras cannot process the complexities of the traffic
environment as well as we can. Having these technologies entirely and legally in charge of a vehicle
is several years away.

 

 

A safe driver is one who constantly maintains very good situational awareness enabling the early
identification of potential risks and makes knowledgeable decisions to keep themselves and others
safe.

 

 

To overcome complacency and risk-taking driving behaviours that creep in and contribute to our
rising road toll we need a mindset change. Learner or experienced, to be a consistently safe driver
we need to focus on our thinking, what is around me, what could go wrong and what can I legally
and safely do about it.