With so much rain around our roads are fast becoming flooded once more!  The ground is still saturated so even a relatively small amount of heavy rain can quickly cause severe flooding.  When you are faced with driving in these conditions, the following advice will help to keep you safe and keep your vehicle going:

• Take your time when you have to negotiate a flood/deep water.  Stop and assess how deep it is first.
• Drive in first gear as slowly as possible but keep the engine speed high and steady by slipping the clutch.
• Keep to the highest part of the road, ie the middle or ‘crown’ of the road.  For this reason, do not try to negotiate the flood if another vehicle is coming towards you as you, or the other driver, could be forced into deeper water.  
• Never ‘take a run’ at the flood in the hope your speed will get you through!  Quite the opposite will result as this is a sure way of getting water into your engine which could cut out.  On some vehicles serious engine damage can be caused if water finds its way into the air intake. 
• Always consider other drivers as well as yourself - do not drive at a speed which will cause water to be thrown up all over their vehicle as you may cause them to break down.
• Although some diesel engines will tolerate a little water, many modern fuel systems are electronically controlled and therefore affected by water.
• Even small amounts of water splashed onto the electrical components of a petrol car can seriously affect the engine. 
• In residential and shopping areas, do please consider pedestrians on the footpaths - try to avoid puddles at the side of the road, they may well be very deep, but if you can’t avoid them because of oncoming traffic, then please drive slowly through them - don’t soak the pedestrians Brigitte Jones style!

Aquaplaning:

This is what can happen when driving at speed in very wet weather.  It is caused by a build up of water between the tyres and the road surface - your vehicle is literally floating on water!  Your first indication of this is when your steering suddenly feels very light.  When this happens you have no control over braking or steering so do not attempt to brake or to steer.  Release your pressure on the accelerator and hold the steering wheel firmly until you regain control.  The higher your speed, the more likely you are to aquaplane.  Even at lower speeds, if your nearside wheels hit a patch of deep water, your vehicle may swerve because of the additional resistance on that side.  Therefore, keep your speed down and avoid deep puddles at the side of the road if at all possible.  Look well ahead so you can do any necessary braking before you reach the deep water.

In these wet times, stay safe!

We should like to wish all readers a very happy, healthy and safe 2008.  With severe winter conditions forecast over the next few days we thought you would like to be given as much help and advice as possible with winter driving - please see our previous tip on this topic and click on the following link to the ‘Brake’ website, where you will find lots of advice and links to other organisations for even more!  When it comes to road safety, you cannot have too much advice!  http://www.brake.org.uk/index.php?p=602

If you have read through the pages of this site, you will have become aware of our endorsement for Stephen Haley’s book, ‘Mind Driving’.  Click this link to read an article by Stephen on the topic of Sense of Danger: http://www.skilldriver.org/index.asp?page=0.2.3.0.SenseOfDangerArticle

Do take a look around the rest of the skilldriver.org web site: the section on ‘What people say’ makes very interesting reading, and you can also view a list of the contents of ‘Mind Driving’.  Please do visit our shop, where you can purchase your copy of this truly ground-breaking book.  Possibly the best book purchase you’ll ever make!

This is the 7th, and final, in our series of tips from Stephen Haley, author of ‘Mind Driving - New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’.

Space and road position should be managed to control risk.  Spacing-off a danger will reduce it - and this is exactly what space is for.

This technique requires that dangers are identified, and it is therefore more active than maintaining a general ‘buffer’ of space around the vehicle.  When passing between two threats, for example, the chosen line should be balanced on the assessed risks, eg children on the path versus traffic on the other side of the road.

Care Motoring:

In addition, speed and space should always be kept in balance - when space is reduced, as when passing between two threats, speed should be lowered in order to reduce the risk.  The balance here is ’space-position-speed’.

This is the 6th in our series of tips from Stephen Haley, author of ‘Mind Driving - New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’.

Movable objects cast danger into the spaces around them, and any space you want to enter is threatened if someone else could get there too.

A moving vehicle casts extreme risk forward into its stopping distance.  Similarly, a space that is ‘closing’ in traffic will be higher risk than if it is ‘opening’.

This is the 5th in our series of tips from Stephen Haley, author of ‘Mind Driving - New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’.

If you surprise someone, they are more likely to hit you.

Signalling is the basic way to inform, but should not be used ‘automatically’ as the information you want to give may be too early, too late or confusing.  Position, the vehicle’s ‘body language’, gives vital indications too. This helps to explain the reason behind a lot of what safe drivers do. (Editor: Why is it, for example, these drivers don’t always signal (they know to signal at that time would be confusing or superfluous), yet other drivers know exactly what their intentions are?).

The aim is to actively help other road users to anticipate and adjust safely. It gets the driver more involved in what other people need to know, and being predicatable is readily under a driver’s control and relatively easy to improve.

This is the 4th in our series of tips from Stephen Haley, author of ‘Mind Driving - New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’.

High skill is not embodied in lightning reactions. Actions that are early and light show better control than ones that are late and severe.

The difference is in what the driver is reacting to, and whether it is past events (what has already happened) or the future (what is going to happen). It is safer, and more skilful, to anticipate and prevent a crisis rather than react to one. 

A driving style that relies on sudden reactions is not only high risk, but also shows slow thinking and a lack of foresight.

This is the 3rd in our series of tips from Stephen Haley, author of ‘Mind Driving - New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’.

Choosing a safe speed is a driver’s responsibility, and cannot be delegated to a speed limit.

Most crashes happen at legal speeds, so ‘legal’ is often too fast. Speed limits might give the illusion of safety, but they do not give permission to ignore the circumstances.

Obeying speed limits is not a real skill, but properly assessing danger definitely is.

This is the 2nd in our series of tips from Stephen Haley, author of ‘Mind Driving - New Skills for Staying Alive on the Road’.

Staying safe is about how much control you have over what happens to you.

A threat is created if what happens to you is significantly in the hands of someone (or something) else, and a good question is always, “How much control are you happy to surrender to others (or to chance)?”

Reducing risk involves maximising control over how events unfold for you, and not giving it up needlessly.