Everyone jokes that drivers should duck and take cover when the younger members of their community obtain their learner driving permits. There is some truth at the heart of this tease. Young, inexperienced drivers are much more likely to get into car crashes than more experienced drivers. Taking a Safer Drivers Course can benefit young drivers in a few ways.
Hazard Recognition
You can’t see what life is going to throw at you, but you can learn to identify hazards on the road. Hazards include parked or broken-down cars, animals crossing the road, and environmental hazards such as sand and ice.
Being able to identify and recognise hazards allows the driver to correct their actions to prevent an accident. There are some times when it’s inappropriate to hit the brakes, while other times you should definitely brake instead of swerving. Knowing the proper reaction to the hazard will help keep your young driver safe.
Faster Reflexes
Once the teenager or young adult identifies the hazard, they’ll need to react accordingly. Once you encounter danger, you have mere seconds to react to the situation. The more you are exposed to the situation and are forced to respond to it, the faster your reflexes will be.
This seems trivial to experienced drivers, but when you don’t have much experience driving, it can be hard to react to threats in a timely manner. The only way to increase reflexes is to routinely respond to a situation. Much as with tactical training in the national forces, a Safer Drivers Course exposes learner drivers to dangerous situations in a controlled manner so that they can learn how to react to situations.
Understanding the Dangers of Distraction
It’s extremely easy to get distracted while driving, and this is especially true among young drivers. Cell phones create distractions while we’re on the road, but they’re integral to our daily lives.
These courses teach young people the dangers of becoming distracted by a text or attempting to use social media while driving. Once they are presented with the dangers, the learner drivers are then responsible for putting their teachings into practice. This includes putting their phone away or mounting it appropriately on the dashboard if it is the source of GPS for the car.
External influences such as passengers, other drivers, and scenery can also create distractions. Becoming distracted for even a second while driving can have deadly consequences. Young people can learn how to tune out these outward influences.
