Driving, especially in heavy traffic, can easily cause you to feel stressed and annoyed with others on the roadway. Stress also stems from factors not specific to driving. Family issues, financial pressures, meeting deadlines, and dealing with difficult people are all stress inducers. Not only does stress cause impatience and frustration that can lead to unsafe driving, but it can also affect your body and your health.
When you’re feeling stressed, take a minute to adjust your attitude. You cannot control the vehicles around you, but you can control how you react to them. What makes a difference, and what you need to do to remain safe in today’s traffic circus, is to keep a calm, positive attitude. This is something that you can and must learn to do. When your emotions are running high, your judgment may fail you, and you may not notice otherwise apparent and even obvious dangers.
Since we ALL make mistakes in our driving, it goes without saying that other drivers are doing exactly that—making mistakes, and not usually being malicious. When other drivers do something wrong, our reaction should be to let it slide, chalk it up to unintentional human error, the same as we hope they would do for us. Be protective and understanding of other drivers!
Remember these words: “it doesn’t matter.” When other drivers make mistakes, or are rude (even intentionally), it doesn’t matter. In ten minutes, you won’t even remember that it happened. Since we are all human, we can’t be perfect all of the time. Don’t let the error that the other driver commits be the reason that you lose control (one way or another) and have a crash or worse. Many crashes occur when a driver is mad, upset, stressed, or distracted in some way. Try to keep your attitude rational, calm, and positive.
Plan your trips, know your routes. Allow enough time to compensate for traffic delays, bad weather. Deal with other drivers; don’t let their errors control your actions. Stay calm, stay focused, be protective and professional! Safety—ours and that of others around you—is your first priority.