How Can an Online Defensive Driving Course Help You?

When you drive, you may not realize you’re battling for your life. You may think that so long as everyone stays out of your way, everything will work out fine. But the American Safety Council disagrees. According to them, the safest way to drive is called “defensive driving,” which assumes the opposite. Instead of assuming that everyone will do what they’re supposed to do and act naturally, Online Defensive Driving Course teaches you to assume that everyone will mess up. It has been described as “driving as if everyone else on the road were drunk.”

Learning how to drive like this could save you time, money, and even prevent you and your loved ones from getting hurt. An online Texas defensive driving course can give you the tools you need to make this crucial attitude change that will allow you to be more aware of others when you’re driving and more prepared to respond to their mistakes as a result.

Principles of Defensive Driving

Since 1964, defensive driving courses have been offered to teach drivers how to change their attitude on the road to become more cognizant of their surroundings and more prepared to anticipate and deal with disaster. Since then, defensive driving courses have become available online to give you the most opportunity to take advantage of all that they have to offer.

Defensive driving has a few basic principles. The first is eliminating distractions. This includes easy things like turning off your phone and keeping your eyes on the road, but it can also include eliminating internal mental distractions as well. Defensive driving teaches you to stop having a distracted attitude, or one which obsesses over your work or over how late you are or what you have to do when you get home. It’s about keeping your mind on the road, as well as your eyes.

Rules that you learned when you took your first driving test will become important again in defensive driving courses. Keeping a safe distance from the car in front of you is not only a good guiding principle, but it’s also a flexible rule that can change based on the conditions of the road at each moment. What kind of car is it? Is it hitched to anything? Will it affect your visibility? Is the other driver driving aggressively? Are the roads wet or slippery?

These are the kinds of questions that affect when you should brake and for how long, how fast you should be going, and how far away you should stay from the car in front of you. Knowing the rules is great, but defensive driving courses teach you how to react to the conditions around you so that you can interpret those rules for each situation.

How Can it Help You?

Defensive driving is designed to keep you safe by keeping you aware of the road. This has the tangible benefit of keeping you out of the hospital, out of traffic court, and out of jail.

But there are other reasons to take a defensive driving course online. Maybe you already have a fine that you want to waive, or a ticket you want to be dismissed from your license. Courts will often accept a certificate of completion in a defensive driving course as a reason to help you out, provided you haven’t already done it in the last 12 months. Insurance companies also look kindly on your efforts to drive safer and may offer you a reduced rate.

You won’t know the full benefits of taking a Texas defensive driving course online until you try. But since anyone can afford one and no one can afford to drive dangerously, getting the help you need to stay alert on the road and protect you and your family should be an easy choice.