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dare think about stopping in front of a train? Why not? It has a whole bunch more wheels. Driver's training, then, needs to incorporate some basic physics lessons into the curriculum: it would save many lives. I have actually seen professional driving school students taught by instructors to change lanes in front of a truck in the safety margin as a method of moving from one lane to another. This is an instance of unsafe driving habits being overtly taught by so-called professionals.

Our society has become measurably less polite over the last fifty years: waiting your turn and yielding to someone else is not considered a virtue to most people in their daily lives. In driving, this becomes not just courtesy but live-saving behavior. Knowing the other guy was their first, that his time is just as valuable as yours and that he has an expectation of safe and predictable behavior from other drivers.

Highway engineers didn't design our highways with the huge increase in vehicles in mind. Certain intersection configurations are very bad when there are many vehicles-the cloverleaf is one of them. A system that expects two vehicles to occupy the same space at nearly the same time is a recipe for disaster.

Perhaps our litigation-prone society, coupled with nanny-government safety features and messages is what has caused people to fail to exercise due caution in the highways. Part of this is no doubt the influence of massive exposure to video games and there are no deaths attributed to horrible driving in video games! I've noticed that young people tend to drive as though nothing can hurt them-not true! There is no re-boot or do-overs in real life. More emphasis needs to be put on the fact that arriving safely is the ultimate winning strategy. They also drive like they watch their computer screen-tunnel vision straight ahead. They never appear to know there are others on the road, likely as preoccupied and unaware as they are.

Most truck driver training on the other hand, although far too short and far too limited, focuses on defensive driving skills. Truckers therefore are better prepared to see danger ahead and avoid it if possible, given the limitations of their larger vehicles. One of the main systems used for training is the well-known Smith System. In a nutshell, the Smith System teaches five key behaviors to avoid getting into highway trouble. These keys involve learning to look ahead for trouble spots, keep your eyes moving to see what is near you, keep a mental picture of what all traffic is doing, planning a mental escape route if potential trouble-spots become real trouble and making sure other drivers know you're there. If these key defensive driving skills were actively taught to all beginning drivers and re-enforced by society, our roads would be much safer places to drive.

Learn more about this author, Linda Sunkle-Pierucki.
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