George Carlin once said something to the effect that "The principle of driving is to go down the road in a big iron thing, without changing the shape of it or any other big iron things on the road". This sums up the basic idea of driving pretty well. But now, with added stress of more and more vehicles on the roads and highways today, I would have to add "...and without getting shot".

According to national traffic statistics, in 2001 there were 6.3 million vehicles crashes in the U.S. resulting in over 3 million injuries and over 42,000 fatalities. Think about that for just a moment. There were over 42,000 people killed on our streets and highways in a single year. And, the number of vehicles and drivers on our roads increases significantly every year.

For the average person, getting behind the wheel of a vehicle is the single most dangerous thing they (you) will ever do. Every time you place that key in the ignition and venture out of your driveway you are placing yourself in a situation of very great, very real life-threatening danger.

Most people give little, if any, thought to just how dangerous it really is to drive a vehicle. They, and most probably you, simply get into their vehicle and drive around, going about their daily business without even really thinking about their driving, the other vehicles around them, or exactly how what they are doing in their vehicle affects the flow of traffic and the vehicles around them.

Driving is something you just 'do'; you don't have to think about it. Do you? You are thinking about where you are going, what you are going to do when you get there, the argument you had with your boss, spouse, boyfriend, whatever. The point is, your mind is on anything and everything except on the extremely dangerous business of driving.

In this series of articles I am going to address some of the problems that I, as a professional driver, see every day regarding drivers and driving. I truly hope that these articles will cause you to see yourself and your own driving habits, and to instruct on the proper, safe way to drive on our streets and highways.

Aggressive Driving

The first area I want to tackle is patience. Traffic can be bad at times. None of us enjoys being caught in heavy, slow moving traffic. Unfortunately, this is a reality for many of us in this day of millions of fellow drivers on the road.

One leading cause of accidents is trying to drive faster than traffic is moving. It really isn't so much that you are driving at some excessive rate of speed, but that you are trying to drive faster than the flow of traffic. In order to do this, you must weave in and out of lanes, cut people off, and generally be a pain in the rear.

When you do this, often times you are far too close to the vehicle in front of or behind you. This may work just fine the first few times you do this. You may well have 'gotten away' with this type of aggressive driving for a long time. But what happens when you cut in, are only two feet away from the vehicle in front of you, and they suddenly hit the brakes hard? Perhaps traffic is suddenly slowing down, or an aggressive driver cut in front of them?

By the time your brain recognizes what's happening, and can send a signal to you to react, you have already plowed into that vehicle and may well have killed someone. Maybe that someone is yourself, maybe it's the three year old little girl in the back seat.

At 40mph it takes the average passenger vehicle driven by an attentive driver 164 feet to stop. 40mph is 58.7 feet per second. For an attentive driver it takes between 1 and 2 seconds to react to the need to apply the brakes. That means your vehicle will have traveled at least 58.7 feet before you can even begin to hit the brakes. In the example I described above, it is physically impossible to hit the brakes before hitting the car in front of you. And that's at 40mph. Even if you've cut in 10 feet behind that vehicle, it's obvious that there is no way to stop if they do.

Is where you are trying to go, or your own impatience really worth that?

If you're in that big a hurry, leave earlier. If you are simply the impatient type, don't drive during heavy traffic times if you can't control yourself and drive like a responsible person.