While doing some research on aggressive driving, I was struck by the tendency, by some, to use the term aggressive driving and road rage interchangeably as if they were the same thing. While one can lead to the other, they are definitely different and I think it is important, for your safety and mine, to understand the distinction between the two.

We all can recognize an aggressive driver. They are the ones who speed, tailgate, weave in and out of traffic, pass in no-passing zones, and run red lights; sometimes doing two or more of these acts at the same time. Most aggressive drivers drive aggressively as a matter of habit, either ignoring or unmindful of the possible consequences. Most feel that they are excellent drivers who have complete control over their vehicles and everyone else is just getting in the way. While they are aggressive, they would never actually want to hurt anyone.

Road rage comes about when a driver is pushed over a psychological tipping point, loses control, and becomes so enraged that he or she tries to take out their anger on another driver. Even a normally law abiding driver can, under certain circumstances, be pushed over that edge. A typical road rage incident starts out with one driver cutting off another or forcing him to take evasive action. That leads to retribution of some sort and very quickly a traffic game begins with each driver trying to “teach the other a lesson.” Too often the game of retribution escalates to the point where the drivers try to confront each other directly and the situation turns violent and deadly.

Road rage has become so prevalent in American society that all you have to do is type “road rage” into the search field of Google news and you can easily find a recent example. I just did that and read an article from this morning about two drivers who began cutting each other off until one blocked the other at an exit ramp and both got out of their vehicles to confront each other. Unfortunately one reached for a machete and attacked the other. He was subsequently arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Another situation from two days ago led to two drivers attacking each other with metal batons and bats. A little over a month ago, a driver in my community was shot while driving on the interstate in a road rage incident

This is the first of a series of articles on aggressive drivers and road rage. In following articles, we will examine how to recognize whether or not you may be guilty of some aggressive driving tendencies and we will look at the psychological make up of different types of aggressive drivers and we will see how a driver can be pushed over the edge into a fit of rage. We will also look at steps you can take to prevent becoming a victim of a road rage incident.

To learn more about driver safety and education please visit our Driver Safety Alerts at http://www.nationalsafetycommission.com.

Be careful out there and drive safe.

Labels: aggressive driving, driving, road rage, safety

It’s Christmas shopping time again and that means thieves and predators will be out in force so this is a good time to remind you of a few simple safety tips to keep your shopping experience safe and enjoyable.

• Try to do all your shopping during daytime hours, if possible.

• If possible, don’t go shopping alone; take a friend or relative along. It may take a bit longer but there is safety in numbers.

• Even if it takes a bit longer, try to find a parking place as close to the store or mall as possible.

• If you can’t park close to the store or mall, pick a well lit space to park.

• Make sure you always lock your car.

• Don’t leave any purchases in plain view in your car. Place them in the trunk or, if you don’t have a trunk, cover them with a blanket or something similar.

• Don’t carry too many packages at once. That makes you an easy target. Before you accumulate too many packages, return them to your car and lock them up securely.

• Save your most expensive purchases for the end of your shopping trip.

• If possible, don’t carry a purse. If you must carry a purse, loop it over your head and under your arm to make it more difficult to snatch. Always keep your purse close to your body, never in a shopping cart and never leave it open.

• Men should carry their wallet in a front pocket to make it harder to steal.

• Watch for people who may bump into you or try to distract you in some other way. They may be setting you up for pick-pocketing.

• Never use a video arcade, toy store, or a movie theater as a baby sitter. Predators are on the prowl looking for unattended kids at this time of year. If you must take a child shopping with you, use the following tips:
o Make sure the child is well rested and fed.
o Once inside the store or mall, remove jackets, gloves, etc. that can make the child uncomfortable inside a warm building.
o Always keep your child in sight.
o Take some snacks and a toy along to keep the child occupied and satisfied.

• If you are parked away from the store, ask a store employee or mall security guard to escort you to your car.

• When you leave the store, especially at night, have your keys ready in your hand. Jumbling packages and fumbling through a purse for keys makes you an easy target. Keep an alarm or a can of mace on your key chain for self protection.

• If you have a key-less entry system, don’t unlock your car until you are next to it. The chirping noise and flashing lights could alert a potential thief when you are most vulnerable. For the same reason, don’t use your key-less system to locate your car. If necessary, write down your parking location before you leave the car.

• Once you arrive at your car, enter it as quickly as possible, lock the doors, and start the engine.

• Don’t put your packages in the front seat. Packages sliding forward onto the floor when you hit the brakes can be a major distraction. Taking your eyes off the road, even for just a second, can lead to catastrophe.

• Don’t pile your packages so high in the back that seat you have trouble seeing through your rear view mirror. The trunk is the best place for your packages.

For more articles on holiday safety visit our website at http://www.nationalsafetycommission.com.

Have a safe and happy holiday season.

Labels: driving, holiday, safety, shopping

The holiday season is here again and the holidays present us with some unique driving situations. To have a safe and happy holiday season, some of these tips are worth remembering.

The festive nature of the holiday season provides us with some temptations that could lead to a dangerous driving situation. The obvious problem is alcohol consumption. That after-work party with a bit of spiked punch sounds innocent enough until you consider that, even if you are just slightly buzzed, you are still impaired. Alcohol takes time to metabolize out of the system and the daily commute is hazardous enough without adding alcohol to the problem. Remember that, even if you aren’t at fault in a collision, if the officer suspects that you have been drinking, you will be presumed to have contributed to the collision or to have been at fault. You could be charged with DUI and the insurance won’t pay a penny.

If you attend an evening party, it may be OK to have a small drink at the beginning of the evening so long as you know you will be there long enough for the alcohol to metabolize out of your system before you leave. If your plans include drinking during the party, make sure you have a designated driver or an alternative means of getting home.

If you are hosting a party where alcohol will be served you need to be aware that you can be sued if someone leaves your place and is involved in an alcohol related collision. To protect yourself, you need to ensure that all your guests have a designated driver to drive them home or that they call a cab. To be a really good host, you could consider not drinking anything yourself and offering your services as a designated driver to get your friends home. Also you should ensure that there are plenty of non-alcoholic drinks available for your guests. There are a lot of options; just make sure you choose the ones that are safest for your guests and that protect you as a homeowner.

If you don’t plan to attend any parties on New Year’s Eve, stay off the roads. There are just too many drunks out on the road on that night and that makes it dangerous for even the safest driver.

Remember these facts about alcohol:
• Alcohol is the same, no matter what form it takes. A 12 oz. can of beer has roughly the same amount of alcohol as a 6 oz. glass of wine and a 1.5 oz. shot of whiskey.
• Alcohol takes time to metabolize out of your system. Drinking coffee won’t speed up that time one bit.
• Be aware that drinking on an empty stomach will allow the alcohol to enter your bloodstream much faster.
• Know what you are drinking. If you don’t know exactly what is contained in that holiday punch, you could be consuming much more alcohol than you imagined.

Keep your holidays safe and festive. Don’t allow a poor choice to ruin the holidays for you.

For more articles on holiday safety visit our website at http://www.nationalsafetycommission.com.

Here’s wishing you a safe and happy holiday season.

Labels: alcohol, drinking, driving, holidays, safety

It is such a shame when a soldier, sailor, marine, or airman returns safely from a deployment overseas only to die shortly after returning home in an incident that was so easily preventable. You've made it safely through your deployment by keeping your head on a swivel and paying attention to every possible threat. Unfortunately too many service members forget that a different set of survival skills are required while reorienting themselves to the home-front.

As a retired Chief Petty Officer, I certainly understand the emotions involved in returning home after a long deployment. During your deployment, your actions and freedoms were severely restricted and you are no doubt looking forward to quickly regaining those freedoms. Specifically the freedom to get on a motorcycle or behind the wheel of a car to go anywhere you want, for as long as you want.

That return to freedom has resulted in some shockingly high fatality rates due to motor vehicle collisions. Note that I say collision and not accidents. Accidents are something you have no control over. Motor vehicle (MV) collisions result from someone making a poor choice that sets in motion a chain of events that lead to a collision. MV collisions are preventable.

All of the military services have experienced a major increase in traffic fatalities since the beginning of the Iraq war. From FY 02 to FY08, the Navy and Marines have lost a combined total of 857 members in Privately Owned Vehicle (POV) collisions. In just the last three fiscal years, the Army has lost a total of 370 soldiers. More than half of these deaths were on motorcycles. The majority happened at night and on weekends. More than one third involved speed or alcohol. In more than half of the fatal collisions, seat belts were not used.

You probably had some training sessions with blood and guts videos before the end of your deployment to remind you to be careful when you return to driving. However a lot of those training sessions neglect to remind you of the behaviors you need for safe driving. Before returning home, it is important to stop and think about those driving behaviors that could get you into some real trouble. With that in mind, lets look at some of the tools you will need to survive at home.

For all those long months you have lived a daily existence in a high stress, adrenaline rush environment. It takes time to readjust to the “laid back” civilian environment. Those of you who have deployed before can probably relate to the odd feeling of being in a combat or shipboard environment one day and a safe, comfortable home environment the next. While it is a good kind of stress, the return home puts us in a different kind of stressful environment. Remember that “good stress” is still stress and that stress takes a toll on our bodies. Depending on the environment you left behind, it could take days, weeks, or months to decompress from your deployment. The adrenaline rush you have lived on combined with the adrenaline rush of returning home can lead to impulsive behaviors or cause you to be easily distracted from the important task of concentrating on driving. Becoming aware of that fact is the first step in overcoming it. It may not be possible, at first, for you to get down from that adrenaline rush and relax enough to concentrate on your driving, so, even though it may not square with your take charge personality, it may be wise to let your significant other take the wheel for a while.

During your deployment you probably encountered the fight or flight response on a regular basis. That life saving reflex allows us to respond to an emergency situation by redirecting blood flow to the large muscles and giving us a big boost of adrenaline to either fight or run away. After the emergency was over that you probably shook like a leaf. That wasn’t fear but rather the excess adrenaline in your body having no where else to go. Driving on an American expressway is nothing compared to driving in Baghdad, but you still have to make emergency decisions and, when you do, the body’s fight or flight response automatically kicks in. All these little adrenaline rushes can quickly lead to fatigue and that can lead to a case of Driving While Drowsy. If you are going on a long trip, remember to take rest breaks at least every two hours or every 100 miles.

For those of you who drove in Iraq, you stayed alive by driving very fast down the center of the road and looking for every suspicious object that could disguise an IED. That way of driving became a reflex action. In other words, you did it without thinking about it. That reflex action is not an easy thing to turn off when you get home and it may take you a while to realize that the piece of trash next to the curb is just that; a piece of trash and not an IED. Those very important reflexes that kept you alive in Iraq could lead to a collision here at home. Again, let someone else drive until you can learn to relax and feel safe again.

Obviously alcohol is a major contributor to MV collisions and fatalities. When you get home, relax, have a few drinks. You deserve it. Just make sure you use a designated driver or have an alternate means of transportation.

Remember that the freedom from all the restrictions doesn’t mean freedom from the need to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle or a seat belt in your car.

To learn more about driver safety and education please visit our Driver Safety Alerts at http://www.nationalsafetycommission.com.

Welcome home. We are grateful for your service and we don’t want to lose you now; especially when it can be so easily prevented.

Labels: driving, military, post deployment, safety

One of the many things I have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving is that, after changing jobs last year, I won’t have to drive by the local mall during my daily commute this Christmas season. If traffic wasn’t bad enough during my commute, the Christmas shopping season turned it into an absolute nightmare. If I had one Christmas wish each year, I would wish that drivers would gain a little common sense and understand what the real meaning of the season is all about. Since that probably isn’t going to happen, I thought a few reminders might be in order to get us safely through the holiday season.

Planning - One benefit of the recent spike in gasoline prices is that it taught us that we need to consolidate trips to save gas. Trying to consolidate all your holiday shopping into one or two trips can help save your sanity and some money.
• Before going out, create a shopping list for all the folks on your gift giving list.
• Use the internet, newspaper ads and mail flyers to find who has the best bargains.
• If you can, devote a single day or two to get all your shopping done.
• Shop early. With the economy so bad this year, retailers aren’t waiting until the end of the season to start their sales.
• Map out your trip and go in a clockwise direction to all your stops. Doing that will ensure you are making more right hand turns rather than waiting for left turn lights.

Dealing with Other Drivers – The frantic pace of the holiday shopping season can bring out the worst in drivers. This is where you really have to keep your cool. When another driver cuts us off, steals "our" parking space or blocks an intersection, we just feel like we have to do something about it. That usually means honking horns, flashing lights, creative sign language, or, worst of all, verbal exchanges. Doing something like that can lead, and has led, to pushing another driver over the edge into a road rage situation. Road rage isn’t aggressive driving. Road rage comes about when one driver, who feels he or she has been pushed just too hard, uses his or her car or some other type of weapon to physically attack an offending driver. You don’t want to be the person who pushes that person over the edge. When you feel like another driver has been rude or dangerous, remember the F.I.D.O. principle. Forget It and Drive On. There is nothing you can do to change that other driver’s behavior. Just let it go and keep out of their way.

Intersections – Trying to get through busy intersections is probably the biggest headache holiday drivers face. My biggest pet peeve is those drivers who, when traffic ahead is backed up to the intersection, pull into the intersection instead of waiting at the stop line until traffic ahead clears. The usual result of that is, when my light turns green, I am stuck because of the other driver blocking the intersection. When that happens, I sometimes fantasize that, if I were prone to road rage and had a gun …… Well, you get the picture. Believe it or not, traffic would flow much more smoothly if everyone would obey the traffic signs and drive at the speed limit. At intersections, remember the following rules:
• When traffic is backed up to the intersection, resist that temptation to pull up. Wait at the stop line. It only costs you a just a couple of minutes to wait for the next light. Doing that will keep you safe and keep you from getting a ticket for blocking the intersection.
• Trying to make it through a yellow light at the last second often results in actually running a red light. Yellow lights mean prepare to stop. I can’t tell you the number of times I have had to wait through a green light for other drivers who are running the red light. Their excuse to the police will be that the light was yellow and they didn’t have time to stop but the police aren’t going to buy it. You can get a ticket for running a yellow light if the officer felt you had time to stop.
• Don’t assume that the car ahead will continue moving and try to stay on his tail to get through the light. Assume that he may stop for no apparent reason and keep your distance.
• Remember that you can’t take the right-of-way. You can only give it up to someone else. If there is a conflict over who has the right-of-way, give it to the other driver.

Pedestrians – There is probably no time of year where we encounter more pedestrians. Remember that pedestrians in a crosswalk, whether marked or not, always have the right-of-way. Pedestrians can’t move as fast as a car can especially when they are burdened down with packages, so don’t expect them to jump out of your way. Remember also that pedestrians may not hear you coming. Their minds are occupied just like yours. Their ears may be wrapped in a muffler or a hat or the pedestrian could be totally deaf.

Stay Off Your Cell Phone – Driving, especially at this time of year, requires your full attention. If you must make a call, pull off the road.

Following these simple rules will allow you to keep your hard earned money to buy Christmas presents instead of paying for traffic fines, court costs, or auto body repairs.

To learn more about driver safety and education please visit our Driver Safety Alerts at http://www.nationalsafetycommission.com.

Here’s wishing you a safe and happy holiday period.

Labels: driving, holiday, safety