If you’ve never gotten a ticket or been in trouble with the law, you may think that you’re exempt from the need to enroll in a Texas driving safety course. But with hundreds of thousands of preventable accidents occurring each year, many of them involving people who thought the same way before they got into trouble, a driving safety course is a great way to look ahead and prevent tragedy before it’s too late.
That way of thinking about your life is how a Texas defensive driving course will teach you to think about the road every time you leave the house. Looking ahead to potential hazards and predicting the behavior of other drivers through awareness of your surroundings are the founding principles of defensive driving. It teaches you to use road rules to your advantage, to assume that other drivers are going to act irrationally and prepare for it, and to help you learn to stay calm in stressful situations.
Before we go over how you can enroll in a Texas driving safety course, first we need to go over what defensive driving is and how it can help you.
Define “Defensive Driving”
Even though you’ve probably been taught to respect others, you also probably think it’s different on the open road. We’re all susceptible to occasional aggression while driving, but defensive driving safety courses take it a step further by teaching you that respect doesn’t always mean “trust.” The safest drivers respect the actions of others while also considering that those actions might be dangerous or illegal. Defensive driving teaches you to be aware of this possibility and to learn how to react.
By observing patterns in other drivers’ behavior, you’ll be able to stay alert and prepared to respond to their actions, and the damage those actions could potentially cause. You can’t always assume that other drivers will do exactly what you would do, or what any driver should logically do to follow the rules and stay safe. This is why with training in defensive driving you’ll always be looking ahead, anticipating hazards and mistakes based on how others are driving, and preparing your response accordingly.
What does that mean? How do you “prepare,” exactly?
We’ve all heard rules like the “two seconds” rule that defines how far away we should stay from the car in front of us. But this rule should always be changing depending on the actions of others and the conditions of the road. There are many situations where you want to give yourself more than two seconds’ distance to brake if anything goes wrong, depending on the weather conditions on the road, the aggressiveness of the other driver, and the mechanics of your specific car.
Awareness of all these factors is the main lesson of defensive driving, and the first and best thing an online safety course can give you.
How Can I Enroll?
There are defensive driving courses all over the country approved by the American Safety Council. Contact the Texas Driving School to find out when you can enroll in a defensive driving course for as little as $25 per class.
Not only can you get the psychological and skill benefits from the course, but there are other incentives too, like getting tickets and fines dismissed and improving your driving record. A certificate of completion in an online defensive driving course is admissible in court in many cases. Contact your local safety council’s email or chat service to find out if you’re eligible and what kinds of benefits you could be getting from a defensive driving course today.
Leave a Comment