It’s no secret that driving during the winter is hard. The roads can be slippery, and it affects how you drive. You try to do the right thing and be responsible. This is the reason you drive a little slower so that you don’t put yourself in a dangerous situation.
Granted, it’ll be better to avoid driving altogether during winter, but that’s not always possible. You might need to go to work or pick up some groceries. Whatever the reason is, you have to drive at some point.
You may think there’s nothing else you can do to stay safe, but there’s one pro-driver tip that could make things safer and better for you. With this tip, you could even speed up a bit if you want.
The simple tip for better and safer driving is this: look towards where you want to go. Yes, that’s all you have to do to drive better and safer during the winter.
Simple but hard to master driving tip
Professional drivers take a long time to master this tip. Looking beyond what’s in front of you isn’t something people do naturally. It’s counterintuitive to the way people normally drive, so mastering it requires some dedication.
Your eyes tend to lock on what you don’t want to hit, such as the car right in front of you or other dangerous things you might see while driving. Your brain naturally focuses on those things to keep you safe, but it also works against you. You may not worry much beyond that, yet that’s exactly what you should be doing.
When you pay attention to the car in front of you, you involuntarily do all sorts of things, like forcing yourself to drive at their speed. While this may seem like a good thing, it doesn’t help if you want to drive safer during the winter. Staying focused on one car makes it harder to focus on what’s in front of and surrounding the vehicle, which means you could miss dangers. When this phenomenon occurs, it’s called target fixation.
You want to be able to see further down the road even if this means you won’t be paying attention to the car in front of you. This might some dangerous, but you have to learn to trust your peripheral vision a little better.
The reality is your peripheral vision allows you to see a lot more than you give it credit for. It should catch any vehicle braking suddenly, and it should catch anything else on the road you might need to worry about.
Maybe you feel a little uncomfortable doing something you’ve never tried before on the road with all this traffic. Try to practice somewhere you feel a little more comfortable. You could do this on a lonely road until you get the hang of it. As mentioned earlier, this is going to take time because your brain is not wired this way, but you’ll get there eventually.
If you want, you could use video games, especially racing video games to try to improve your driving. This might not sound helpful, but the brain can’t tell the difference, and all you’re trying to do is teach your eyes to focus on where you want to go, not what’s in front of you. Racing video games can show you that this can be done, and maybe that’ll give you the confidence to try this more often while you’re driving.
Once you get the hang of it, driving during the winter will come easier to you, and you’ll be a lot safer, too. Hopefully, you don’t have to drive much in the winter, but you can do it if you need to.
