Causes of Road Accidents

Causes of road accidents

The leading causes of road crashes in your age group (15-24 years) are all preventable.

Alcohol

Driving a car is a complex skill. It involves controlling a heavy and fast moving vehicle while coordinating leg, arm and eye movements and making rapid decisions.

In sport you often make coordination mistakes, but the outcome usually doesn’t have serious consequences. Driving requires skills that are just as complicated as those used in sport, but mistakes made often result in an accident. This is why staying alert when you drive is very important.

Alcohol is a disaster when you need to drive. Even in small amounts, alcohol:

·  Ruins your ability to judge distance and speed

·  Interferes with your coordination

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If your blood alcohol concentration (BAC) reaches .05, you are twice a likely to have a crash than if you had not been drinking. If your BAC reaches .15, you are 25 times more likely to crash than if you had not been drinking. This is why the legal limit is .00 for probationary drivers and .05 for all other drivers. (BAC is discussed in more detail later).

Speed

The well publicised slogan ‘Speed kills’ is very true. This is because the faster you are travelling, the less time you have to react to a sudden dangerous situation and the harder it is to control your car. Young men in particular are often enthralled by speed. These are the kinks of young men who will never grow old. Flowers in their memory line the highways in Tasmania.

8 / /
7
6
5
4 /
3
2 /
1 /
0 /
55 / 60 / 65 / 70 / 75

Dangerous Driving

Like speeding, dangerous driving is usually the result of drinking and driving, or peer pressure. A car full of hyped-up or drunken mates daring your to ‘see how fast it goes’, is a powerful force for some teenagers. You either need to be assertive (It’s my licence, not yours) or avoid such situations.

Dangerous driving can also be the result of losing concentration. You might relax behind the wheel, then get distracted by a song on the radio, a passenger or a good-looking pedestrian. Because you’re moving quickly, a small distraction can lead to a major disaster. Today one of the biggest causes of dangerous driving is the use of mobile phones.

Seatbelts

It seems that when you first get your licence, everyone wants a lift. There can be a huge temptation to please your friends and drive them all home, even if you don’t have enough seatbelts. Resist this temptation.

The more people you have in the car, the more distractions you have. Even a minor accident can be a disaster if a passenger is not wearing a seatbelt. Around 430 serious casualties involved drivers or passengers not wearing seatbelts.

Fatigue

Fatigue can send you to sleep at the wheel. Like alcohol, fatigue slows your reactions and impairs your judgement and reaction times.

Myth / Fact
‘I can make the trip overnight and avoid the daytime traffic.’ / The chances of falling asleep at the wheel after your normal bedtime, especially in the early hours of the morning, are very high.
‘I’ll start the trip after work.’ / Although you might not realise it, you will be tired before you start. You should get a good night’s sleep and start your trip the next day, preferably in the morning.
‘I’ll take plenty of music CD’s to keep me awake, or turn the radio up loudly.’ / This might help you to feel more alert in the short term but it won’t help your concentration. It might even send you to sleep.

Inexperience

Three or six months of weekly lessons may be enough to get your driver’s licence, but it does not make you experienced. You must learn to drive in hail, rain, fog or glaring sunshine, up mountains, on open highways with trucks roaring past or along poorly lit roads at night. It takes time to become experienced in all aspects of driving.

As long as you are aware that gaining your licence doesn’t make you an expert driver, you should be able to avoid many accidents by driving well within your physical and mental limits. These limits are simply defined:

·  Drive within speed limits

·  Take a break every two hours or less on long trips

·  Do not accept distracting behaviour from passengers while you are driving

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Drinking and driving

Before finding out more about drinking and driving, test your current knowledge by trying to answer the following quiz.

True / False
1 / Three 200mL glasses of mixed drinks have the same alcohol content as three 200mL glasses of beer.
2 / Drinking alcohol keeps out the cold and maintains body heat.
3 / Mixing your drinks will tend to make you drunk faster.
4 / Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) measures the weight in grams of alcohol in a 100-millilitre sample of blood. It can be measured by analysing a blood sample or by using a breath analysis instrument to measure the amount of alcohol in the breath.
5 / Pedestrians and cyclists who have consumed alcohol find it difficult to handle more than one task at a time.
6 / In general, males and females who drink exactly the same amount of alcohol over the same period of time will record the same BAC reading.
7 / Similar-sized glasses of different alcoholic drinks raise a person’s BAC by the same amount.
8 / It is easy to tell when a driver’s ability to drive safely is affected by alcohol.
9 / Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream as soon as drinking begins.
10 / People’s driving skills improve after they have had a few drinks.
11 / P-Plate drivers should not eat liqueur chocolates before driving, as the alcohol in the chocolates could register on a breathalyser.
12 / As soon as people stop drinking, their BAC level begins to fall.
13 / It is legal for a 16 year old to buy alcohol in a supermarket but not a hotel.
14 / A number of factors may affect a person’s BAC reading, including weight, muscle-fat ratio, gender, age, emotional state.
15 / On average, you are four times more likely to have an accident when you have a BAC reading of 0.08 than when you have a zero blood-alcohol level.
16 / Chewing gum, eating mints, smoking a cigarette or using a breath freshener will disguise the amount of alcohol in your blood if you are breath tested.
17 / Each of the following will help a person who has been drinking to sober up more quickly.
·  Exercise
·  A cold shower or a swim
·  Vomiting
·  Fresh air and deep breathing
·  Strong, black coffee
·  A brief nap