Safety Tips For Driving At Night.

Driving can be dangerous at the best of times, but at night the risk increases considerably. Even for the most experienced driver driving at night can be quite daunting, especially if you encounter very badly lit areas such as country lanes. The main risk of driving at night is that lots of people are under the misconception that you are able to drive faster at night because there are les people on the roads. This is not the case and statistically speaking we can see that 25% of all accidents happen on the roads between 4pm and 9pm when it is dark. Accident rates also shoot up during the winter time when it gets darker earlier.

There is a very obvious reason why more accidents happen at night: visibility. It is thought that around 90% of a driver’s ability to react is based in what they can see ahead of them. Therefore, vision is an extremely important part of driving. You need to be able to predict the road surface and also pick up obstacles that are in the way in order to avoid a serious accident. If you fail to do this then you are a very real risk of causing an accident and injuring yourself and other road users. Vision is seriously affected at night, in fact all aspects of sight are affected from peripheral vision to colour recognition.

So how can you ensure that you are safe when driving at night? Driving at night is not something that you can easily avoid, especially during the winter period when the nights get shorter. There are however a few precautionary measures that you can put in place that can make driving in the dark less dangerous. As vision is a key component in safe driving then it is essential that you make your sight a priority at all times. In order to do this you need to make sure that you have your eyes tested regularly to find out whether your sight has deteriorated at all. This is especially important if you wear glasses or contact lenses as your prescription may change over time. You should keep the windscreen clean at all times, both inside and out. You may find it useful to keep screen wipes in the car so that if your screen becomes dirty you can clean it. You should always make sure that the lights on your car are in full working order before setting out as it will be too late if you discover they are faulty later on. When driving at night you should use main beam wherever possible but make sure that there is no-one ahead of you as you could dazzle them.

If you become dazzled yourself, the safest thing to do is to pull over in a safe place so that you can take a couple of minutes to recover and then drive off safely. And finally it is imperative that you drive with extra care at night. If you have no choice but to drive on poorly lit roads then always make sure that you are driving carefully, especially around corners and be ready to stop suddenly.

If you follow these precautionary measures then you can travel at night safely and drastically reduce the risk of being involved in a road traffic accident.