More than half of all traffic fatalities happen within 25 miles from home. Why should your home (of all places!) be such a dangerous place to drive around? The answer has less to do with the safety of the local roads near your hometown and more to do with probability, human psychology and driving habits.
Your home is your base of operations for everyday life. Most of your driving starts and ends at your home. This is true for your daily commutes to and from work, buying necessities such as food and shuttling your children to the dentist, school, sports activities and so forth. Because driving is innately dangerous regardless of location, most of your exposure to this risk occurs where you do most of your driving, which is usually within 25 miles of your home. Therefore, if you are going to get into an accident, it will most likely happen near your home.
Home is your sanctuary from the challenges of the world and, by extension, so is your local neighborhood. This is where you feel safe and therefore let your guard down. This feeling of security also causes you to relax your guard while driving. You are more likely to be thinking about other things rather than the driving task at hand. However, this feeling of safety is purely psychological because the objective dangers of driving are the same for all localities that are similar to your neighborhood.
Many of the routes taken close to your home have been driven on countless times. This means that you are so familiar with these routes that you no longer have to think to drive on them. At this point, you are driving on autopilot where simple pattern recognition and muscle memory take over. This capability of humans frees up their minds to focus on other things while doing some routine task. Unfortunately, driving is too dangerous to be done in this manner. It demands the full attention of your thinking mind. Driving on autopilot means you are driving with a disengaged mind, which will not react appropriately should something unexpected happen on the road.
Never give in to the complacency that comes from driving around the familiar surroundings of your neighborhood. Always drive with your mind fully engaged with the task of driving and don’t forget to wear your seat belt.
Stay safe on the road. Call Texas Insurance Agency at (713) 675-2626 for more information on Houston auto insurance.
