Driving: Speed
- At night, don't drive faster than you can see. That is, make
sure that you can stop completely if something suddenly comes into view
in your headlights. Don't count on being able to swerve.
- Use the correct lane. See Lanes.
- Drive the same speed as the rest. Yes, even if that means
speeding a little bit. It is far more dangerous to be going the speed
limit when everyone around you is going 10-15 mph faster (as seems to be the
norm on American highways), than to speed along with them. Yes, "speed
kills", but it's relative speed that counts. The faster the absolute
speed, the worse the accident... but the slower the relative speed,
faster or slower, the far less likely that an accident will
happen in the first place. If you can't keep your speed up to within 10 mph
of most of the traffic in the slow lane, maybe you shouldn't be on that road
at all. Above all, if you've just darted into a small gap in traffic that was
going faster than you, get your butt in gear, rather than make
everybody behind you stomp on their brakes and maybe cause an accident. On a
related note, don't pull into a line that is braking; that introduces a
lot of chaos. (Credit to Judson L. White for those last two.)