Road trips are in fashion these days. People prefer road trips for even longer than average distances instead of flying or trains. Whether you go on vacation or a trip to camp in a far off city, the last thing you would want if your family or friends, you yourself getting injured. Car accidents are not anticipated; neither are they inevitable. However, they do claim almost 6 million lives each year in the USA alone. Car crashes are responsible for over 8 million deaths a year, leaving millions of them seriously wounded with irreversible, incurable injuries. 

Because of the millions of accidents all over the world, there is a fairly big chance you will get involved in one, at some point in your life. The severity of the crashes varies, but all of them cause either serious damage to the vehicle or the driver and passengers inside. Even an accident of slow impact can leave serious injuries. 

Learning to drive safely with instruction from a driving school like ezlicence.com.au/is important; a crucial step in order to avoid injuries in car accidents. But one cannot control the behavior of the other drivers on the road. Therefore, taking precautions is also necessary to prevent or lessen injuries during vehicle accidents. 

Buckle Up Your Seatbelt

Wearing a seatbelt can do more than you can probably imagine. It reduces the risk of suffering from serious injuries drastically. But wearing a seatbelt is not what really matters, but whether you have worn it correctly or not. If you have not worn the seat-belt correctly, it won’t do much for your safety when in the accident. 

Before you bring the engine to life, assign a few minutes to ensure the positioning of a seatbelt. After fastening the seat-belt, gently tug on t to see if it has locked up properly. Pay attention to the seatbelt’s fit as well. If the fit bites into your skin or makes you uncomfortable, you have fastened it too tightly. Stick your fingers inside; can you easily stick two fingers into them? Well, now it’s too loose. Make adjustments accordingly and make sure before starting your car that the seatbelt is fitting your perfectly and is completely locked up. The twist in the belt is also not something to be ignored. Hence if you notice a twist, unlock and straighten it before fastening it again. 

Do not ignore any issues that you may notice when using your safety belts, such as ripped or frayed webbing, as these are indications that your belts could malfunction in an accident scenario. Seat Belt Replacement is something that could save the lives of you and your loved ones, so do not stint on such an expense.

Do not feel ashamed to adjust the seatbelt multiple times, even if you are in someone else’s car. Keep in mind that wearing a seatbelt won’t do you any good as long as you are wearing it wrong. 

Adjust Seats before Hitting the Road

The golden rule to avoid accidents and injuries if you find yourself into one is to adjust your car seat. Adjust it before starting off your vehicle, in a way that is right for your body. First off, always keep your seat at much distance from the airbags as possible. Even if you are a passenger sitting shotgun, adjust your seat as far from the airbags as possible without hitting the backseat passenger’s faces. For drivers, adjust so much that you can comfortably use the pedals. Don’t forget to move back and forth and check whether the seat has locked up in its place or not. 

The back of the seat must always adjust in a way that allows you to sit up straight. If your posture is not right while you drive, the airbags and seatbelts will not be of much use. 

Finally, adjust the headrest’s position. Make sure the center of the headrest touched the back of your head when you are seated in your car’s seat. If it does not, re-adjust the headrest. Perfectly positioned headrest helps in preventing injuries when your car meets any accident such as whiplash or head trauma. 

Sit Up-Straight

While you adjust your seatbelt, also look at your posture. The severity of the impact of the injuries depends upon your posture. Posture impacts the severity of wounds sustained in the accident. In order to minimize the effect of the impact, both the passengers and drivers should ensure the right posture while driving in a vehicle. The reason is that the vehicle’s safety features such as seatbelts and airbags are designed to keep safe only those who are sitting in a straight, upright posture. If you are not sitting straight on your seat, the airbags will hit somewhere else and will not be able to help you in the way they are designed to. Upon a crash, they can collide with the passenger or driver’s seat. 

Usually, people put their feet up on the dashboard. This could cause serious harm to them since accidents are unanticipated. This way, if the car meets an accident, there is no barrier for the passenger since the seat belt cannot be worn in such a position and the airbags will also crash on their legs. To make the safest possible in vehicles, practice an upright posture, especially if you are sitting in the front seat or driving. 

Watch For Blind Spots or Red Light Runners

Always make sure to clean if not your entire car then the mirrors and windshields. Usually, the rearview mirrors and or behind windshields are laden with blind spots. These are not only frustrating for drivers but could prove to be fatal – leading you into car crashes. Also, whenever you are making a turn – especially on the right hand – make sure you pause a moment and look both ways before proceeding. Because the car can appear out of nowhere and crash into you hence it is important to exercise caution while on a busy intersection. 

The same goes for red-light offenders. When stopping at a signal, always count to three before you enter into an intersection on a green light. Pause for a while and look both ways to ensure no one is speeding through on a yellow light.

Conclusion

A car accident can be fatal and turn the life of a person upside down. Even a little injury could carry long-lasting effects and can damage the life of a person, emotionally and physically. Therefore, it is highly important to take all sorts of safety precautions before buckling-up and while driving. Generally, we tend to ignore little connotations of importance which results in costing up a lot. With all the measures we have discussed in this article, it is important for you to take guard of every critical aspect and secure yourself from any scare that might haunt you a lifetime. As people rightly say, prevention is the best cure!