Life-Saving Defensive Driving For New, Young & Other Drivers

Explore key terms in road safety, young drivers, and defensive driving to establish clear perspectives on the problems this course addresses.

Explore road safety measures, driving compliance, and the human factors behind accidents, highlighting global risks, costs, and proactive strategies for safer road use and defensive driving.

Identify the young driver category and accident statistics, understand the urgency of safer driving, and learn defensive driving skills to protect yourself and others from road hazards.

Develop practical defensive driving skills to anticipate and deflect offensive driver behaviors, gaining safety, peace of mind, and safer decision-making behind the steering wheel.

Explore four lessons on road safety hazard management using the hazard identification, risk assessment and control process, and learn how to deploy this tool for effective hazard control.

Identify road safety hazards in three categories—driver, vehicle, and road—and learn how driver errors like speeding, fatigue, and distractions, along with vehicle defects and poor road conditions, cause accidents.

Assess road safety hazards to understand risk and the likelihood of accidents, and learn ways to reduce consequences for young and new drivers.

Section four presents a road safety hazard assessment focused on driver, vehicle, and driving safely. It identifies common hazards and control measures to prevent accidents and produce a documented assessment.

Becoming a safe driver starts with assessing your physical and mental fitness before driving and recognizing hazards like poor eyesight, fatigue, impairment, or anger and anxiety.

Inspect your vehicle before driving to prevent hazards, checking tires, lights, mirrors, brakes, windshields, and fluids, and use the Driver Vehicle Inspection Checklist to ensure safe operation.

Plan trips with routes, timing, hazards to stay prepared and avoid aggressive driving. Maintain communication and apply defensive driving techniques for bad weather, wildlife, and offensive drivers to be safe.

Explore section five defensive driving resources, featuring 13 lessons on physical and mental safe driving practices. Build skills in space management, visibility, and safety procedures for teen and guardian drivers.

Maintain a three seconds plus following distance and create space on the left, right, and front to navigate traffic safely and avoid tailgaters.

Learn to prevent fixed stare vision by regularly scanning the road, mirrors, and surroundings, and perform shoulder checks before lane changes or turns.

Explore the driver vehicle safety inspection checklist with 51 items and daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly checks to prevent driving a defective vehicle, available in the downloadable resource section.

Adopt ten mindsets of a life saving defensive driver to improve road safety, from seeking knowledge and obeying rules to avoiding distractions, yielding, and anticipating hazards to prevent collisions.

Embrace seven on-the-road life saving values—patience, courtesy, forgiveness, knowledge, yielding, focused driving, and doing the right thing—to become a safer defensive driver.

Draft and review a teen driver parent/guardian driving agreement to promote safe driving, clear expectations, and accountability, with a self-signed option and downloadable resources.