Driver safety

I've read so many incidents recently where there have been fatal car wrecks as a result of a simple error. I'm not sure that drivers education is teaching how to handle this error anymore, they sure did in my day, and of course not much helps if the driver is impaired. However any parents who are reading this should pass along to their kids this advice.

It is a common event to have the car drift off the road a bit onto the shoulder. The wrong thing to do is to panic and jerk the steering wheel back toward the road. This often causes a skid and loss of control, frequently flinging the car into a spin and/or into the other lane. It seems I've been reading of this happening just about every day recently.

What you should do is not panic and react but keep driving with your wheels still off the road where they had drifted. This ensures that your wheels are straight. So if you drift say a half a foot off the pavement onto the shoulder keep driving for a few seconds at exactly that distance off the road. Then gradually tip the steering wheel slowly back toward the road and ease back on. I do this myself. Just the other day a car pushed into my lane on a narrow country road so to avoid that driver my car right wheels went off the pavement into the weeds (no shoulder on the spot that driver chose to be pushy). But I just kept driving along for a few seconds where the wheels had gone off the road pavement and then eased back fully onto the road.

If you have a young driver in the house be sure to practice this sometime. Go with your young driver and while driving at a slow speed for practice have him or her drift off the road (in a safe and deserted area of course) so they can train their reflexes to not panic and feel what it is like to just keep driving with the two tires off the road and on the shoulder or on grass or weeds or whatever lines the road edge. Then have them ease back onto the road. Practice it a few times so that their reflexes are secure. You might want to do that yourself too, it's never too late to practice safe driving. Hope this helps.