10 Safety Tips to Prevent Road Accidents

Every year around 3300 people, that’s around 9 every day, are killed or disabled as a result of car accidents in the UK.

The Royal Society for the prevention of accidents has formed a list of ten tips that could prevent accidents from happening.

1. Check your speedometer regularly, especially when coming off high speed roads

If you don’t regularly check your speedometer it’s very easy sometimes to not realise how fast you are going. You may be in a built up area where there is minimum speed limit but adhering to that can feel like you are crawling. Checking you are within the speed limit regularly may not only save you a fine for speeding but can save lives too.

2. Know the limits – look for signs, especially at junctions

You need to know the speed limit of the roads you are using. In many cases, the nature of the road does not indicate the speed limit. In urban areas, for example, dual carriageways can have limits of 30 mph, 40 mph, 50 mph, 60 mph or 70 mph.

Speed limit signs tend to be placed at junctions because this is often the point at which the limit changes. However, junctions are also where you need to absorb a wide range of different information and it is easy to miss a speed limit sign when concentrating on one or more other things (e.g., which way am I going, is that driver going to pull out, etc). So you need to get into the habit of checking for speed limit signs at junctions, and looking for repeater signs after the junction, especially if the nature of the road has changed.

3. Assume lamp posts mean 30 mph, until signs say otherwise – but remember it could be 20 mph

The Highway Code advises that street lights usually mean the limit is 30 mph unless there are signs showing otherwise. Use your common sense judgement as well. If it looks like a built up residential area then lower your speed accordingly to 30 mph.

4. Remember, speed limits are a maximum, not targets

Examples of situations where drivers should drive at lower speeds than the limits are:

around schools at opening and closing times, when children are about (especially residential areas, near playgrounds or parks), on busy, narrow roads, where parked vehicles reduce the width of the road, on rural roads which are narrow, bendy and hilly and visibility is restricted, in poor weather or reduced visibility, on wet, icy or snowy roads or at roadworks.

5. 20’s plenty when kids are about – and may even be too fast

One of the most effective ways we can ensure that a child who dashes into the road or who makes a mistake while cycling does not pay for that mistake with their life, is to drive slower when children are, or may be, about.

6. Try no higher than 3rd gear in a 30 mph limit

If you struggle to keep your car within 30 mph when driving in a 30 mph zone, try driving in 3rd gear (or lower when necessary). If you can comfortably travel at 30 mph in 3rd gear without feeling that the engine is laboured, adopt ’no higher than 3rd in 30 mph’ as a principle.

7. Recognise what makes you speed - keeping up with traffic, overtaking or being tailgated

We all have reasons why we sometimes speed up. It might be listening to loud music or feeling stressed by a driver too close behind. Finding out personal speed triggers and then addressing them is a good way forward.

8. Concentrate – distracted drivers speed

Paying attention while driving is obviously very important and can lead to less
speeding.

9. Slow down when entering villages

Villages are in rural areas and normally surrounded by roads with 60 mph limits. But, of course, in the village itself there are pedestrians, cyclists, junctions, slow-moving vehicles.

10. Give yourself time – there’s no need to speed and you won’t get there quicker

You’re late so you drive faster to make up the time. The reality in a lot of cases is that you can try to drive like the clappers but not get there much quicker than if you drove normally.