10 Essential Habits for Safer Driving

A habit is either doing its job or it's going to hurt someone. There's no third option and no neutral ground. Here are ten worth building before a bad one builds itself into you.

None of this is a secret. You've seen the list before, on nine hundred identical blogs written by nobody. The difference is I've watched each of these go wrong from the passenger seat, and I can tell you what it looks like the second before it does. If you want the wider version of the same argument, the whole point of professional lessons is that they hand you the good habits over in Balbriggan before the road hands you the bad ones.

1. Actually look, don't just glance

You can check the mirror because the routine says to, or you can check it because you want to know what's behind you. The tester can tell the difference. So can the truck. A mirror you looked through without seeing is worth nothing.

2. Keep the car roadworthy

Bald tyres, a soft brake, a bulb gone on the back. None of it announces itself until the wet Tuesday you need it. Walk around the car once a week and press the tyres with your thumb. Two minutes buys you a lot.

3. Belt on before the handbrake off

No airbag replaces a seatbelt. It supplements it. Make it the first thing your hands do, every single time, so it's not a decision you can forget to make.

4. Drive like the other fella might be an eejit

You can't control how anyone else drives. You can control the gap you leave, the speed you carry into a blind bend, and whether you assumed the van indicating left would actually go left. Reading the road and the car together is the whole of what people call defensive driving.

5. Know the rule before you break it by accident

Most law-breaking on the road isn't rebellion. It's not knowing. The rules of the road are a slim book and it will not take your evening. Read it once so you stop guessing at yellow boxes and filter lanes.

6. Watch the speed, especially where it drops

Speeding isn't only the motorway hero. It's the fella still doing sixty when the limit fell to fifty at the edge of a village and there's a school on the left. The limit is a maximum, not a target, and it's lowest exactly where the people are.

7. Hold your lane and mean it

Weaving through traffic to gain two car lengths is how the merge-with-eyes-shut merchant is born. Pick a lane, hold it, and change it only with a mirror and a signal you actually mean.

8. Signal for them, not for you

Your indicator is the only thing on the car that tells anyone else what you're thinking. A signal you flick on as you're already turning is a memo that arrives after the meeting. Early, or don't bother.

9. One job at a time

Set the phone before you move. Adjust the mirrors and the seat before you move. Once the wheels are turning, the only job is driving. The phone-in-the-lap merchant always thinks he's the exception. He is not.

10. Tired is a state you drive out of, not through

Drowsy driving does the same thing to your reactions as drink, and it sneaks up quieter. If your eyes are heavy, you are already worse than you think. Stop, get a coffee, get twenty minutes, or let someone else take it. Nobody ever regretted the road they didn't drive half-asleep.

Do these until you stop thinking about them. That's not a personality. That's just repetition, dressed up as character.