British Columbia handbook · chapter 7 · 19 min read

Personal strategies

in this chapter

• Fitness to drive – seeing and hearing – assessing your health – staying awake – keeping focused
• Dangerous emotions
• Impairment – facts about alcohol – facts about drugs
• Taking risks
• Peer pressure
• Unsafe passengers
• Unsafe drivers
• Aggression on the road – preventing aggression
• Organ Donor Registry personal strategies

In the previous chapter, you learned how to share the road safely with other road users. This chapter gives strategies you can use to handle situations that can have a negative influence on you and your driving.

Fitness to drive

• You wake up with a cold and feel awful, but you have to go to work. You take some cold medication before getting into your car. As you’re driving, you notice that you feel light-headed and tired. Turning right at the first intersection, you narrowly miss a cyclist.

To be in control while driving, you need to be able to rely on the information your eyes and ears pick up. You need to be healthy, rested and focused to be a safe driver.