Teaching Drivers How to Get Out of a Skid or do an Evasive Swerve Can Result in More Crashes Afterwards, Not Fewer!

Research paper:

Training drivers to have the insight to avoid emergency situations, not the skills to overcome emergency situations

Executive Summary

Emergency situations are situations that require immediate action to regain control over the vehicle and/or that require immediate action to avoid a crash. Driver training that aims to enhance the skills to regain control in emergency situations such as skid training, evasive swerving and emergency lane changes has proven not to be effective.
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Why do so many drivers ignore the safety of construction zone workers?

April 20-24, 2020, is this year’s National Work Zone Awareness Week.  Sadly, however, far too many drivers are extremely thoughtless about the safety of roadside workers.

An orange construction zone sign with a deliberate spelling mistake for double-meaning: Give Us a Brake.
When a wrongly spelled word is the right word… Brake! Slow down and give construction zone workers the time and space to be safe. (Copyright image, 2019.)

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Breakdown at the Roadside? Where Should you Wait, for Greatest Safety?

Many people are killed or seriously injured while waiting for a repair or a tow after breaking down on the side of the road, so how should you protect yourself?

Waiting in a broken-down vehicle or standing beside it like this could cost you your life if it is hit by another vehicle. (Wikimedia Commons)

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Myths and Bad Advice in Road Safety (USA) — A Quiz!

Find out which advice you’ve been given is either inaccurate or even potentially dangerous, and why!

Here are ten questions which we hope that American drivers and any people involved in any aspect of U.S. highway safety will participate in.  We are looking to see how many have been given the safest advice and how common any inaccurate beliefs may be.

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The Need to Use Research When Promoting Road Safety

It is both a sad and dangerous fact that the majority of people who use roads — and who doesn’t? — very mistakenly assume that they know a lot about road safety.  However, taken overall, it is a very complex subject about which only a very few top experts even come close to knowing it ‘all’.

The wreckage from the crash that cost James Dean his life. Ironically, this was just after he had made some PSA announcements for the National Safety Council about highway safety.  (Wikimedia Commons)

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An Innovative and Simple Redesign of Roads in Sweden can Saves Lives Around the World

An accepted name for the new design is simply the ‘Swedish 2 + 1 road with wire rope median.’

Central guardrail / crash barrier on a rural road -- a Swedish road safety innovation.
This excellent feature for busy rural roads actually comes from Sweden, where it is known as a ‘2+1’ road.  A cable barrier or – as here – a solid barrier is placed, without a raised median, between opposing traffic.  Often there are two lanes in one direction and one in the other, but this alternates from one side to the other periodically, to permit overtaking. The result? No deadly head-on collisions… a major safety improvement.   (Copyright image, 2019.)

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