Fasten your seat belt! Passengers inside a moving vehicle travel at the same speed as indicated on the speedometer. When a vehicle collides with a solid object, the people inside keep moving until something stops them. If you are not wearing your seat belt, you will be thrown out of the vehicle or the steering wheel, windshield, dash, other objects or someone else could be stopping you. This “human collision” often causes serious injuries.
Everyone is responsible for avoiding collisions. Even if someone else does something wrong, you may be held liable for a collision if you could have done something to avoid it.
Be courteous while driving. It means giving other drivers room to change lanes, not cutting them off, and signaling turning lane changes correctly.
Drive defensively. It means being able to see dangerous situations before they happen and respond quickly and effectively to prevent them.
Turn on your headlights half an hour before sunset and keep them on until half an hour after sunrise. Do not drive with a single headlight or with lights that do not point correctly.
Use signs to tell other drivers what you want to do. Give the correct signal well in advance of the action and make sure other drivers can see it.
Stay to the right of the road unless you want to turn left or pass another vehicle. Get into the habit of driving in the right lane, leaving the other lanes clear to pass. The left lane is the passing lane on all multi-lane highways.
Obey speed limits. Where there are no established speed limits, the maximum speed in 50 km / h in cities, towns, villages and urbanized areas.
Produce. At an intersection without stop signs or traffic lights, you must yield to any vehicle approaching from the right. At an intersection with stop signs at all corners, if two vehicles stop at the same time, the vehicle on the left must yield to the vehicle on the right.
Stop for school buses. Regardless of the direction you are traveling, you must stop each time you approach a stopped school bus with its upper alternate red lights flashing, unless you are on a highway with a median. (A median is a strip of land that is raised, lowered, or dividing a road where vehicles travel in both directions.) You must obey the school bus law on any road, no matter how many lanes or what the speed limit is. Be prepared to stop for a school bus at any time, not just during school hours. If you don’t stop on a school bus, you can be fined $ 200 to $ 1,000 and get six demerit points for the first offense.
Check shoulders while parking. If you are backing up or in any direction, turn your body and head in that direction and look back over your shoulder. If you need to remove your seat belt to turn your body and see properly when backing up, do so. But don’t forget to re-fasten your seatbelt before moving on.
When entering a freeway, always use the acceleration lane to increase speed to the normal speed of freeway traffic before merging into traffic. Be careful not to cut off any vehicles when joining the flow of traffic. It is dangerous and illegal for a slower moving vehicle to cross in front of a faster moving vehicle.
If you must use a cell phone while driving, use a hands-free microphone. Get into the habit of using your cell phone only when it is parked or when a passenger uses it.