Skills

This video from Young Drivers of Canada shows the safest following distance on the road and how to adjust this distance depending on the road conditions. Maintaining a safe following distance does not appear to be a skill that is practised by a majority of drivers today and the video is a good refresher on a skill that you should be practising without fail whenever you drive.

I watched the driver on either side of me this morning on my way to work. We were stopped waiting for a red light to turn green and I could see that both of them were totally focused on the that light. Neither one of them moved their heads and immediately started off when the light turned green. What a wonderful example of blind faith!

There were some students in my Elder College class last week that were surprised to learn that it was no longer generally acceptable to hold the steering wheel with your hands in the 10 and 2 position. Who would have thought that how to hold your vehicle's steering wheel would change, or that it even mattered?

Do you plan to avoid trouble when you are driving? A defensive driver always tries to maintain a space cushion around all four sides of their vehicle. The habit gives them both time to decide and a place to go if a problem occurs.

Mirror, signal, shoulder check, move. These are the four steps for a successful lane changes. Simple enough one would expect, until you watch what goes on around you in traffic today.

Is it really necessary to make shoulder checks while driving? If you expect to pass a driving exam in British Columbia the answer is a definite yes. However, some driving schools are teaching mirror adjustment techniques to replace shoulder checks.

I've been driving with eDriving's Mentor app for about a year now and know that it has made improvements in my skills. I haven't cracked the top 10% barrier yet, but I'm still trying! The secret to having a high score appears to be trying to anticipate and plan for what is happening around you as you drive.

Welcome to wet weather season in British Columbia! Some areas are blessed with this situation more often than others, but drivers need to be aware of the perils of wet highways. The well being of you and other road users depend on it.

Paul from CompetentDrivingBC often shares his insights here on DriveSmartBC. I like his explanation of whether to signal or not and decided to share it with you. It's great advice that we should all practice all the time.

Surprisingly often, when teaching new drivers, I've been asked 'Do I have to signal this?'.

The RCMP's advanced driver training course was without a doubt the most fun of any course many of the participants had taken in their service. We used an inactive runway at the Boundary Bay airport in Delta and a collection of well used Crown Victoria police interceptors to polish our driving skills. Contrary to what you might think, this was not a high speed driving situation as we never got going faster than about 65 km/h.