BE PREPARED: DRIVING AT NIGHT
Teens are far more likely to be in serious crashes at night.
At night you have less time to see and react to road signs,
upcoming curves, a car swerving into your lane or a kid
crossing the street. That’s why you have to slow down and
be more cautious. As you become more experienced, you
will learn to recognize and avoid hazards more quickly. The
major difference between day and night driving is the ac-
cident rate. When you consider that 90 percent of a driver’s
reaction depends on vision, and vision is limited at night,
it is no surprise that the night driving accident rate is
roughly three times that of daylight driving.
The cause of the decreased vision varies. At night, the
driver’s normally wide field of vision is narrowed to the
field of view illuminated by your headlights, the headlights
of other vehicles and fixed road lights. Depth
perception, color recognition and peripheral vision may
be compromised after sundown.
One of the most dangerous aspects of night driving is one
that we can do little to control: blinding glare from oncom-
ing headlights. When your eyes are hit by a bright beam of
light from an oncoming car, you may be distracted. Drivers
can be affected by the oncoming glare of headlights as far as
3,000 feet away. If you feel you won’t be able to see after a
car approaching you has passed, slow down and try not to
look directly at those headlights. Looking at the right
side of the road may
be effective.
Online Tools for Success:
Road Trips
Road Trips is a four-part learning tool you can use with family
members to build your driving skills. Parents receive tip sheets
on critical driving skills in addition to three-minute tutorials
on how to teach these skills. Parents also can track and
log required parent-supervised driving hours and skills
learned, as well as rate the driving performance of
their teens.
• “Learn. Plan. Practice. Log.” starts your driving practice in
a parking lot and gradually advances you to more challenging
environments including major highways.
• Learn the basics of driving in a tutorial you can review with your
parents. Start from the very basics of adjusting the mirrors, seat and
seatbelt to set yourself up for success.
• Plan where you will practice driving and the goals you would like
to achieve.
• Practice skills such as backing up and stopping and starting by
completing and reviewing tutorials.Then put your practice to the test
on the road.
• Log your practice and review tips online.You can continue to review
and update your plan as your skills progress.
Road Aware
Road Aware provides teens with a safe platform to develop and hone
their hazard perception skills as drivers, without exposing them to
crashes. Road Aware encourages deep processing by asking teens to
visualize where hidden risks are located, rather than simply showing
them the risk.This engagement increases the likelihood that these
lessons will be transferred to long-term memory and practiced on the
road. Road Aware simulates common driving hazards such as
pedestrians and sudden brake lights.
Driver Feedback
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, three
of the riskiest driving behaviors are hard acceleration, hard decelera-
tion and hard swerves.The Driver Feedback iPhone app measures these
three risky behaviors while you’re driving and gives feedback.Among
other features, Driver Feedback gives you a score, compares trips, and
sends results over email SMS.
