These days, it’s never been safer to drive. Still, that doesn’t mean accident don’t happen, especially in heavy traffic. Getting through clogged streets safely requires a bit of extra work, but it’s well worth it in order to avoid serious accidents…
Heavy Traffic: Important Safety Steps
Leave space for merging
Cars tend to end up bumper-to-bumper in heavy traffic. This ends up preventing other cars from moving out of a backed-up lane and into a faster moving one. As you’d expect, this is a big reason as to why this sort of slowdown occurs in the first place.
Therefore, try and leave space for cars to merge. Doing so will help those other cars get back into the flow of traffic. Plus, they won’t have to potentially try and pull off a riskier, more-aggressive merger attempt. Now, not only can things move faster, but everyone will be safer as well.
Watch your lane jumping
Sometimes, you’ll need to move lanes while in heavy traffic. For instance, it could be that there’s an accident up ahead that you need to go around. However, if you’re just moving lanes because you’re impatient, then you may actually be a part of the problem.
What happens is people think a lane next to them is moving faster and try to immediately move into it. Not only does this back up your current lane, but it also causes the other one to grind to a halt. Sometimes, the best thing to do is just stick to your current lane, so everyone can start moving at a steady pace.
Keep calm
You want to avoid getting frustrated while in heavy traffic. Of course, it isn’t exactly an enjoyable time. The thing is, the more upset you get, the more of a risk there is that you’ll make a poor decision. In turn, you’ll have a higher chance of ending up in an accident.
Instead, keep your cool and understand that no one likes to be stuck in traffic. There isn’t anything you can really do to make it move faster. Ultimately, it’s not worth your time to get upset over something like this.