You strap yourself into your trusty compact car to go to the store 2 miles down the road and pull out of the driveway. It's a trip you've made hundreds of times before, but to get there, you've got to compete with still-running SUV-hemoths, delivery trucks, people on cell phones and kids who just got their driver's license.
So how do you protect yourself, and be a better driver in the process?
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
You need to develop and improve your situational awareness, that's how. Everyone does. You do. I'm always reminded that I do, too. But, I've been driving for 30+ years with only one accident, so I'm doing something right.
Situational awareness, in driving, means (1) really being aware of other drivers and hazards in your vicinity, (2) being aware of your place amongst those other drivers, and (3) being aware of your ability--or inability--to react to changes in traffic as you drive.
Situational awareness, in driving, first means realizing a few things. First, you have the power to kill your fellow driver(s). It only takes one little mistake. So you have a reaponsibility to everyone else on the road you come in contact with (so to speak). Second, your fellow drivers also have the power to kill you. Your duty to yourself and your loved ones is to help those other drivers not kill you, by putting yourself in a position where they can't, or at least are much less likely to. You can't really develop situational awareness unless you realize these things. Traffic is a living thing, and it will bite you in the ass-or worse-if you don't pay attention to it.
First rule in developing situational awareness: Focus on your surroundings, also known as "Know where you are." Most people, when driving, tend to focus on one or two things, usually the car that's directly in front of them, or on the patch of road that's directly in front of the hood of their car. If you do this, stop it now. Instead, raise your eyes a bit and look at traffic as if it was a unitary thing flowing around you.
For example, on the freeway, scan and assemble information. Look 3 cars ahead of you; 5 cars; 10 cars. Look a quarter mile ahead when terrain allows. Without moving your head, look to your right and left front quarters. Check your rearview mirror and sideview mirrors. Do this in the space of 2-3 seconds, then put it all together to give yourself a picture of what traffic looks like at that moment. When you understand what traffic looks like--where all the cars are and what they're doing--you'll have a better understanding of your place in traffic, and whether it's safe or unsafe. I usually spend about 75% of my time looking ahead of me, 15% of my time looking to my sides, and 10% of my time checking mirrors, when I'm driving straight ahead; I focus more on the sides and rear when I'm about to change lanes.
One trick, by the way, is to rotate your sideview mirrors out so you can't see the sides of your car. That way, you can see into your blind spots so you can change lanes only by looking into your mirrors.
Another example: grocery store parking lot. This is one of the best places to get into an accident--shoppers walking to/from their cars, clerks pushing lines of carts around, people backign out from behind behemoth SUVs, kids running around. Again, focus on all of the moving parts at once. Here, scanning the area ahead of you is more critical; spend about 95% of your time there. Treat shoppers like they're deaf and blind and not paying attention; most of the time, at least one of those is true. I treat kids in the parking lot like wild animals; they're unpredictable, barely in control, and have absolutely no situational awareness of their own. You have to lend them some of yours.
Once you start to develop a "total information awareness" approach to driving, you can start to tell when things start to look wrong in time to do something about it. A car three cars ahead, next lane over, that's swerving slightly. Brake lights 6 cars ahead. The guy in your rearview mirror who's changing lanes too quickly and coming up behind you. The couple in the car ahead of you that looks like they're having a fight. The puff of smoke four cars ahead that signals someone's had a tire blow out (this happened to me a couple of years back in LA in dense trafficc moving at 80 mph).
Another of the rules for developing situational awareness is: Know where you are going. The corrolary to this rule is: Know if you can get there safely, before you go there. And by these commandments, I mean know these two things for every change you make in driving--crossing a road, making a turn, exiting/entering the freeway, changing lanes, making a stop. In moving traffic, for example, all other drivers are going to assume you'll keep doing exactly what you're doing now.. When you change what you're doing, you force them to change that assumption, so you have to give them time to react.
For example, I want to change lanes on the freeway to a space that just opened up on my right. I've checked the cars ahead of me and beside me, so I'll be aware if anyone's moving up to take that space, or if the car ahead of that space is moving too slowly. But I also calculate whether drivers in cars surrounding that space will have time to react to my move. I have to calculate whether my move will put them in a substantially more unsafe position than they're in right now.
What are some things that kill situational awareness? Talking to someone else, even someone else in the car. Part of situational awareness is knowing how dangerous holding a conversation is; in light traffic, you can get away with not paying attention to the road from time to time; in heavy traffic, not so much. Occasionally I tell people in my car to be quiet for a few minutes, and they know I'm asking for their safety. Talking on a cell phone is worse; this should be common sense, but apparently that's in short supply. And don't get me started on texting while driving; I irritated my daughter last weekend by telling her to pull over if she wanted to text; she put down the phone.
What else? Checking email on the cell phone. I did this one last weekend - just the act of looking at the phone caused me to swerve slightly towards a semi in the next lane. My daughter had her revenge then, telling me to put MY phone down, and she was totally right. Other things - eating, brushing your hair, getting a sip of coffee-in short, anything except driving kills situational awareness. You can counteract this a bit by aggressively paying attention ot the road while blindly reaching for the cup or the next handful of french fries, but it's not a guarantee of safety.
Well, that's enough rambling for now, I guess. Have fun driving out there, and invest a little time in developing your situational awareness. It's be the best investment you'll ever make.