Paying Attention for the Safety of All: 3 Strategies to Help You Keep Focused While Driving*

Distracted driving kills thousands of people a year. Whether it’s texting, sleepiness, or even eating, attempting to do just about anything else while operating a car means that you could be putting your life and the life of those around you in danger.

Staying focused on the road is a huge element of being a safe and defensive driver, but life continues to happen around us, and sometimes, our emotions or situations can be causing us to lose our focus. We can become very at ease in our cars. They can even feel like an extension of us, which means that we can get a little too relaxed in them and relax our vigilance as well. To make sure you stay focused on the road, we’ve collected a couple of tips you can use that will make sure that you never have to worry about looking up to see a bumper coming at you fast, or the red and blue flashing lights in your rear window.

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Minimize distractions you can control
Driving is an intensely mentally stimulating experience. Even when you feel relaxed and are just calmly coasting along, your brain is still processing hundreds of thousands of pieces of information flying at it. From the road ahead, to what’s in your mirrors, to the weather, to your speed, all this is continuously being processed and converted into useful information.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from bringing unnecessary distractions into our cars and forcing our brains to work even harder. To help prevent further distractions while driving, try to avoid eating or drinking while driving and never use your phone. Even a few seconds of distraction can mean an accident.

Don’t let your emotions take over
Fatal road rage linked accidents number in the hundreds every year. Allowing your feelings to get the best of you at the wheel can mean that you will behave in ways that you wouldn’t normally and will lash out at other drivers that you perceive to have wronged you. Getting annoyed at a driver who acted foolishly or even dangerously is an expected response, but if your urge is to retaliate violently, you need to learn to take your emotions out of driving and see the bigger picture.

Many times, drivers that cut you off or turn without signalling are distracted themselves or are rushing to get somewhere. They aren’t purposely trying to wrong you.

To help keep your emotions under control while control, give yourself plenty of time to get where you’re going and create a stress-free environment with your car with a tidy interior, soothing music, and check this out: mini scent diffusers that can fill your car with calming scents.

Beware talking to passengers
One of the leading causes of distracted driving is talking to passengers or children. Many times, we can become overly focused on the conversation happening and not on the road, which can lead to accidents. To prevent this, minimize conversations if you know you tend to get distracted and teach your children the importance of letting you focus on the road.