The importance of having a safe ride is clear to anyone who has ever been inside the car. When you start driving your car, you promise yourself to do everything you can to enjoy a safe and secure driving experience. However, with time drivers often stop paying enough attention to safety, risking the life of their passengers and their own lives. If you don’t want your next car ride to result in an accident, keep these 7 tips in mind and try to follow them every time you sit behind the wheel.
Increase your safety with JiJi
1. Don’t drive with low fuel
Driving with minimum level of gas is never a good idea: in the worst case scenario you will be stuck on an empty road, in the middle of nowhere, at night. When you only have to do a short-distance drive, it becomes tempting to avoid filling up your car. However, running on empty does not just threaten your safety in case of an emergency stop – it also damages your car’s mechanisms and makes your vehicle last much less than it normally would.
2. Make everyone wear seatbelts
It’s clear that nothing is more important for the safety of everyone in the car than having seatbelts on. In case of a car crash, seat belts are known to reduce the risk of injury and death by as much as 50%, which means you’ll have a much better chance of surviving an accident when you’re buckled up. This is especially important for the passenger on your right – this seat is known to be under the biggest threat during a crash.
3. Buy auto escape tools
Certain kinds of accidents cause car exits to become blocked, which is particularly dangerous in case there is a fire or blast after the crash, or if you drove into water and the car is drowning, and you can’t escape from the car. For this reason every car you drive should be equipped with an auto escape set – typically it consists of a hammer used to shatter glass, and a knife or scissors to cut the seatbelt. That way you’ll be able to exit the vehicle before it’s too late.
4. Don’t drink and drive
This seems like such an obvious rule, and yet thousands of accidents happen exactly for this reason. We cannot stress enough the danger of driving while intoxicated. Your vision becomes blurred, your thinking becomes distorted, and your reaction becomes much slower. The combination of these factors can result in a gruesome accident that can jeopardize the safety and even life of everyone in the car with you. You can either not drink at all, ask someone who didn’t drink to take you home, or take a taxi home.
3 more tips for even more safety on page 2
5. Learn to change a tire
You never know where your tire will betray you and blow out in the middle of the road. You can be far away from home or the nearest auto shop, with no one to ask for help – in this case knowing how to change a tire is essential and can even save your life. Additionally, this is also why you should always carry a spare tire in your trunk: even if you’re lucky enough to never need a spare tire, there might be fellow drivers in a situation where they urgently need to have a tire replaced, and your spare tire can be very helpful to them.
6. Buy a safer car
With the endless variety of new and used cars on JiJi, making the right choice is not always an easy task. While you can look for your favourite car make, body style, and additional features, what you should also keep in mind is the availability of safety characteristics and mechanisms. Ideally, a car should be equipped with anti-lock brakes, multiple airbags, functional seatbelts, rearview camera, collision warning systems, and blind spot detection system. When your car has the latest and most important safety features, you can really drive with confidence.
7. Focus on driving
Although driving is a hobby and pleasure for many of today’s drivers, sometimes they are distracted by something, which results in collisions and other accidents. For your car trip to be completely safe, make sure your eyes are never off the road, your hands are never off the wheel, and your mind is always focused on safely taking your car from one destination to the other. Even when you are in a hurry or have a long hard day ahead of you, first get to your destination safely, and then start worrying about other stuff.
