Bad Drivers! The Worst Driving Habits You Could Be Doing

Not Wearing Your Seatbelt

After half a century of public awareness campaigns, safety-based laws and countless studies that have shown that wearing a seatbelt can reduce the chance of severe injury in a collision by nearly 80%, there are still people out there who refuse to wear them. This choice is often justified by some obscure relation on the order of their sister’s ex-boyfriend’s fifth cousin’s stepdad’s uncle, who was inevitably told they would have been killed had they been wearing their seat belt during some ridiculous crash. True or not, stories like that are no reason to assume any collision you get into would be an anomaly of that sort. Unless you’re looking to set the record for human shot-put launched through a windshield, wear your seatbelt.

Our next bad habit is another high profile issue that has spawned awareness campaigns around the world.

Checking Your Phone

With our cell phones becoming our primary devices for communication, entertainment, and work, it can be hard to pull our attention away from them. But for the sake of everyone around you, hold off updating your status on Facebook or sending that message 'real quick.” When you divert your attention from the road to your phone, you’re essentially driving a literal ton of steel blind. Redirecting your attention takes time, as does responding to a sudden change. When you combine these detriments to response times, it compounds the likelihood of your reflexes failing you.

Coming up, a lesson on decisiveness.