Author: Brenda Williams

Everyone remembers their first experience driving a car. It is something that you almost never forget (despite how incredibly awful it may have been for both you and the instructor). In my case, not only did I attend driver’s education classes at my high school, early on Saturday mornings, but I also had the advantage of having both of my parents allow me to practice my driving skills (or lack there of) with them behind the wheel of their beloved vehicles.

With my mother, I remember that when she first turned her vehicle over to me to learn how to drive, we had been on our way to the local mall. All of a sudden she pulled into one of the parking lots that was almost completely abandoned of vehicles, save for one car. Before I could even ask her what she was doing, she parked the car and got out of the driver’s seat. I knew then that it was my very first opportunity to try to prove to both her and myself that I was capable of learning how to drive a vehicle both safely and efficiently. At the time, I would marvel at my parents and the ease with which they seemed to be able to control these heavy pieces of machinery. Both of my parents were right-handed, but I would pay attention as they would drive their cars on occasion, using only their left hand on the steering wheel. How in the world were they able to do that? And more importantly, would I ever be able to reach such a height in my own feeling of self worth and ability to do the same?

I have since found out that the skills you learn during driver’s education and the skills that you actually apply to your own driving are both one and the same yet different. As it turns out, the skills that you learn sort of melt into good habits (or bad habits) as you continue forth with your driving career. And for some of us who spend a little too much time watching television and/or our own parents and other adult figures driving badly, we tend to pick up their “skills” as well, making them our own. For example, I don’t think I have ever once seen my father drive with both hands on the steering wheel even though we were taught in driver’s education that you are always supposed to have both hands on the steering wheel. Additionally, I cannot even begin to tell you how many people I see on a daily basis who fail to use their turn signals before switching lanes, or who follow other people WAY too closely…All of these things were in our handbooks and were taught to us as well during driver’s education. So, what gives?

Learning how to drive is an extremely fun and exciting time during the course of anyone’s life. And though it may, at first, seem mildly terrifying, it is a rite of passage that if taken seriously, can help you develop into a better driver over time.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/learning-how-to-drive-a-car-1594397.html

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Author: Brenda Williams

Recently, I have witnessed a number of pedestrians crossing the street without looking to see if there are any vehicles coming. In some instances, there were even a few pedestrians who didn’t seem to care at all that there were vehicles coming, and they actually took their time crossing the road, expecting the vehicles around them to stop. And stop, we did. After all, what else were we supposed to do- run them over?

Pedestrians have quite a bit of power over motor vehicles when it comes to the roadways. It is pretty ironic when you consider the fact that pedestrians are almost always outnumbered by vehicles (except if there’s a major parade or athletic event taking place). However, the rules of the road state quite explicitly that all vehicles MUST yield to pedestrians..even if they are jaywalking- even if they do run after a ball into the middle of the street blindly, etc. These rules are, again, put in place to protect us. How awful would it be to be driving your car and then all of a sudden you realize that you’ve struck a pedestrian? How would that affect your driving. How would you explain that sort of a situation to your friends and/or family?

When I was in college, I was part of the women’s cross country and track teams. As part of our daily routine, we would go for group runs around the local area. There was one run in particular that stood out in my head (among others) in which one of my teammates recounted a near-death experience that she and another one of my teammates almost had. They had just gotten back from running a quick 30-minute loop and were on the sidewalk next to a brick building that housed a popular American-fare restaurant. All of a sudden, they heard the screeching of tires, and when they turned around, they saw a car just a few feet back from them slam into the side of the brick wall to the restaurant that they had just seconds before run by. At this point in their run, they were only two minutes or so from the track (where we would normally meet up before and after runs), and when they got back, they were both visibly shaken.

A bunch of us stood around (coaches included) as they told the story of what had just happened minutes before to the rest of us. Some of us exchanged hugs with them, thankful that they hadn’t been hurt, while others of us stood in awe. This was a popular running loop that we had all done at some point, and it could have well been any one of us running that loop that day. Who is to say that we would have been as lucky. The next day, the coaches held a brief meeting about being aware of your surroundings. As for the driver, it turned out that he hadn’t been paying attention and tried to over correct after he had slammed on his breaks to avoid running a red light.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/looking-out-for-pedestrians-1594411.html

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Author: Brenda Williams

I was driving on the road early this morning to go to the gym when I had the feeling that I was going too slow. All around me, people were rushing as if a) there was a tornado chasing them down the road b) their house was on fire and they were rushing home to put it out or c) they were simply on their way to work. I decided that it was probably the last choice since is was rush hour and also because of the fact that I didn’t see a tornado anywhere and certainly couldn’t smell any smoke.

I was driving the speed limit; actually, I was approximately five miles per hour over the speed limit and people were just zipping by me left and right as if they hadn’t a care in the world. What was I doing wrong then? I decided that there was nothing that I was doing wrong. I could feel myself starting to get angry as the third person cut me off in the last twenty minutes. It almost seemed as if the traffic was beginning to dictate the law. This is where it would have been nice to have a police officer witnessing these dangerous driving habits. I laughed to myself as I thought about the fact that the cops are almost never where you want them to be when you need them.

Road rage is something that will affect us all at some point in our lives-whether we want it to or not. We become enraged when we feel personally affronted by other seemingly unscrupulous drivers who do not care a lick about what it is we are doing on the roadways because to them, they own the roads anyway. Earlier today, I was on a two-lane section of a highway in the lane beside a place where cars merge onto the highway (which is always a bad place to be). In any case, this person came up from the merge lane, hesitated and then proceeded to get in front of my vehicle and slow down significantly, which then caused me to slow down, which then caused the guy (who was already tailgating me) to have to slam on his brakes. And then what happened, the guy behind me, the guy in front of me, the guy behind him AND me all tried to get into the other lane. Fuming, I turned my indicator off and remained in the slow lane.

If you are a victim of road rage, how do you calm yourself down? What techniques do you imply to keep you from losing your temper? For some people, turning on the radio is a great distraction. Meanwhile, for others, looking out the window or listening to soothing music seems to work wonders. It simply depends on what your preferences are. In my case, I have found the most effective means for dealing with road rage is to simply take slow deep breaths and “think happy thoughts”. You would be amazed at how well this works!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/road-rage-revisited-1594425.html

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Selling your car on a venue such as Craig’s list should be as easy as pie. In fact, selling your vehicle, or rather “putting your vehicle up for sale” on a place like Craig’s list is actually incredibly easy. The hard part comes when you actually try to elicit a response from potential car buyers. The problem is further compounded if you find yourself trying to sell a vehicle that is, for the most part, undesirable in the eyes of the public.

There are different ways to go about selling your vehicle. For example, if you have a group of friends or close family members, you can always broach the subject with them to simply let them know that you are thinking of selling your vehicle. At that time, they will have the option to either pass up on the opportunity or perhaps suggest someone else that they might know who may be interested in making a pass at your car before you totally give up and head to the dealership.

Another option that people have when trying to sell their vehicle is to simply sell it back to the dealership and get a trade-in-value on the car which (depending on the amount of money that the dealership is willing to offer on the vehicle) may be enough to roll over into whatever vehicle you are going to purchase next. Vehicles aren’t cheap to own and/or maintain. In some cases, depending on the type of vehicle that you buy, it may be more or less costly to maintain than other types of vehicles. For example, my Jeep is significantly more money to maintain than my grandmother’s Honda Civic. This is based on the fact that I don’t get quite as good gas mileage, and I have had several mechanical problems on a vehicle that is just shy of three years old.

You don’t have to be a genius to sell your vehicle yourself. However, you will want to definitely enlist the help of someone who actually knows what they are talking about and can sort of stand over your shoulder to give you advice on what to do. Failing that, you can always contact the DMV in your area by going in person or by contacting your vehicle registration office in the area to see what they have to say about first-time vehicle sellers. Buying or selling your first vehicle are both pretty big deals and they are certainly not something that you are going to want to mess up by not being as careful as you can be. Therefore, you should always make sure that you do your homework ahead of time and find someone to assist you. If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve made sure that I had someone with me who was working on my behalf and who had my best interests in mind when I went to purchase a vehicle. They would have know what questions to ask as well as what sorts of answers to expect. Whatever you decide when you do sell your vehicle, remember that there is always the possibility of a bad decision haunting you if things don’t work out they way that they should!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/selling-your-car-is-easy-1594438.html

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In this day and age, we are living and breathing technology to the point where almost everyone owns an iPod; and if they do not own an iPod, then they own some other high-tech mp3 player. Recently, I was driving in my father’s Nissan Maxima. I watched in slight fascination as he used some sort of fingerprint technology to open his door and then, without a key, he again used just his finger to push a button to start the car. Unbelievable.

I can still remember a time when we had a tan rotary phone in our house. It was positioned downstairs on the nightstand by the couch, and that is the phone that I learned how to memorize my grandmother’s phone number on. Still, to this day, I remember her lengthy phone number, and I credit it to the fact that we had this rotary phone which demanded that you wait after circling each number. We then procured a cordless phone (another fascinating object), but not before we used a corded telephone to make our calls. I remember how we had this corded phone in the kitchen. It was white and had the longest cord ever. Any time that I wanted to make a phone call or receive a phone call, I would run to my room down the hallway with the cord in tow. There wasn’t any real privacy with corded phones because someone always knew where you were by following the cord. I’m sure that parents loved this fact!

Nowadays, however, with the birth of cellular technology, GPS systems, dvds, cds and mp3s, do we have too many technological devices in our cars? More importantly, should there be more bans on the sorts of technological items that should or shouldn’t be allowed into a vehicle? I almost feel as if people have forgotten what it was like to once live in a world where it was still cool and normal to use a pay phone. Nowadays, if you have to use a pay phone, it’s almost embarrassing, like somehow you are admitting that you are lower on the totem pole than everyone else because you have to resort to using a public telephone. So, when did we become ashamed of these things?

Driving is distracting enough as it is. I certainly do not think that we need the added ‘help’ of modern technology to make us that much more distracted- to sort of will us into not paying attention quite as much as we should. What is it about technology that draws us to use it in them wrong situations such as when we are behind the wheel of a moving automobile? The next time you think about adding another gadget to your vehicle, think of the practicality behind it: When will you have the occasion to use it? Will it be distracting and/or detract from my ability to drive my vehicle in a safe manner? These are some things definitely worth considering. After all, if you were to see someone on the highway with a million or so gadgets inside of their vehicle, how would you react?

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/too-many-electronic-devices-1594477.html

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Whenever I drive on the roadways at night in North Carolina, I always seem to come across people who have accidentally (or at least I’d like to think that this was the case) left their high beam lights on. Of course, as luck would have it, these people are almost always right behind my vehicle. Not only this, but they are typically tailgating me as well, which only makes it worse.

High beam lights are lights that are located on the front end of your vehicle beside your regular driving lights. On any given vehicle, there are at least three types of lights: your parking lights, your driving lights and your high beams. In some cases, some vehicles are also equipped with something known as ‘fog lights’ as well (which my vehicle has). So, then, why is it that so many North Carolinians can’t seem to figure out their lights?

I can’t tell you the number of times (on a daily basis) that I witness people at night with the wrong lights on. Often, I will see people driving at dusk with just their parking lights on while everyone else has their regular lights. Contrary to popular mistake, “parking” lights are intended for use when you are parking your vehicle and are sitting in your car idling. For example, if you’ve just pulled up to someone’s house and are parked in their driveway, or if you have parked at an apartment complex and are facing someone’s apartment window with your vehicle, this is an opportunity where you would use your parking lights so that you don’t disturb residents with the much stronger light that is emitted from your regular driving lights.

There is nothing worse than sitting down to dinner inside of your home and then having the lights from someone’s car shining in your face. This is where parking lights are helpful. They are NOT for regular driving. Typically, in most vehicles, the switch for your parking lights is located on the same mechanism as your regular lights. For example, in my Jeep, when I want to turn on my regular driving lights, I have to twist a switch on the left hand side of my steering wheel twice until it reaches the second notch. If I accidentally twist it once, then all I have done is turn on my parking lights- not my driving lights. Perhaps, then, this is what people are doing? Maybe they are simply forgetting to go the extra step.

The other major problem is high beams. High beams are only supposed to be used when you are on the road with no one in front of you for at least three miles. The high beams put out a much more powerful light than parking lights or driving lights, the point being to illuminate a greater span of area so that you can see better around you. Typically you use high beams in a situation such as when you are driving through a wooded area or are on a country road.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/using-your-lights-1594491.html

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I would love nothing more than to be able to trade my car in. On top of that, I would even take it a step further to say that I would not only love to trade my car in, but I would love to trade it in and actually get something back for it that I could then take and apply to whatever next vehicle I was going to purchase. But, alas, this is not going to be a possibility for me because we are currently living in an economic climate that is not really conducive to anyone with a sport utility vehicle trading their car in (unless you count the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program).

People trade in their vehicles for all sorts of reasons. For some of us, we trade in our vehicles because we have just finished making our last payment and cannot wait to jump into a newer car and an even newer car payment (note the sarcasm here). For others of us, perhaps we work for a corporation or some other company in which we get the pick of the litter when it comes to company cars. A great example of this is my father.

When I was younger (and even up until a few years ago), my father worked in upper management at Avis Rent-A-Car. When he first started working for Avis, they used to allow a large number of their employees to have company cars as long as they worked there. Over time, they changed this policy to only include upper management staff members, but for as long as my father worked for Avis (20+years), he was always afforded a company car. At first, I never thought anything of it, and for a while I can remember being annoyed that just as I was getting used to “one of daddy’s cars,” all of a sudden he would have a different one the next day it seemed. Truth be told, he was allowed to switch out cars every year, and for a while there, he did. Whatever new cars came on the market and were being rented out by Avis, my father had one. I didn’t realize what was going on until some of my friends in grade school pointed out the fact that my dad always had a new car.

In reality, most people aren’t this lucky. My father has since retired from Avis and is now a lawyer, thus he no longer has a company car. I am only too sure, however, that it must have been nice to have that privilege. Imagine that: no car payment ever, no vehicle tax to pay, no gasoline or payment for any of the maintenance or upkeep! Those are the sorts of things that put people in the hole financially! If you do own a car, you should make it a point to occasionally check the blue book value of it, this way you’ll be sure to stay up with what is currently going on in the market. Knowing how much your car is worth is great information to have and to arm yourself with as well when you are going to a dealership where they assume that you don’t know as much as they do.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/when-to-trade-your-car-in-1594509.html

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Getting into a car accident is something that almost all of us will have to experience at some point in our lives. It isn’t one of those situations where you look around at other people and think to yourself, “Gee, that will never happen to me…” Rather, it is one of those situations where you wonder when you are going to get into one and what the consequences will be.

When I was a police officer, I worked a lot of traffic- which in layman’s terms simply means that I responded to a lot of motor vehicle accidents and pulled people over for things such as not wearing their seat belt, tailgating, not having insurance/driver’s license, etc. Well, one time when I responded to a call of a major accident occurring in Raleigh, North Carolina in the area of a popular thoroughfare called Capital Boulevard, the accident had just happened, but already traffic was backed up for a couple of miles. When I made my way to the scene, there surely was an accident involving two vehicles. In one of the vehicles (an SUV), all of the occupants were totally fine, and there was hardly any damage to the vehicle. However, in the other vehicle, there were two occupants, and it was pretty clear that the entire front end of their vehicle was totaled. The driver was a young woman who was in hysterics and complaining about chest pain (because the impact had deployed her air bag into her chest, knocking the wind out of her), and her boyfriend was the other passenger, who was fine and was just trying to placate his girlfriend.

After all was said and done and I got the girl to the hospital, the entire story unfolded. At this particular section of Capital Boulevard, one of the lanes turns into a turn lane-only, which means that everyone suddenly has to merge over into the other lane. Most people who travel on this road are familiar with this lane and will merge over way beforehand. However, even if you are not familiar with this road, the arrow on the actual road indicates to drivers well in advance that they are going to eventually need to get over. It turns out that this girl wasn’t paying attention and so she found herself among the many others who, in the past, have had to switch lanes at the last minute. However, rather than paying attention to what was in front of her, the girl was so focused on having someone let her in front of them so that she could merge, that she didn’t realize that the vehicles in front of her had been stopped for a red light. As a result, she ran her car into the car in front of her. Because she was at fault, I had no choice but to issue her a citation from where she was laying on the hospital bed.

In the aforementioned situation, the people involved in the accident had been lucky- especially the young female driver. The other drivers around her had done nothing wrong, but due to her negligence, she could have hurt way more people than just herself.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/when-you-get-into-an-accident-1594526.html

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There have been times lately when I have almost wished that my car would get stolen so that I would have a great excuse for needing another car. However, after toying with this delightful thought, my dreams were soon crushed by the fact that I am pretty sure that having my car stolen wouldn’t mean anything to the car insurance company as I would probably still be responsible for paying some or all of what was previously owed on the vehicle.

Having your car broken into is not a great experience at all. However, having your car stolen is even worse. I say that having your car stolen is worse because, for most people, owning a car is their first major investment. In fact, some people easily spend upwards of $30,000 on a single car! This number doesn’t even begin to include all of the extra money that you would have to factor in for things such as car repairs, oil changes and gasoline expenses. By the time that all is said and done, you have probably paid the equivalent of owning a small house except for the fact that it is on four wheel.s

When I was a police officer, one of the major patterns that I was finding with stolen vehicles was the fact that most often than not, the vehicles were being stolen from a particular area during a particular time and that criminals were targeting a certain type of vehicle. For instance, in one area where there were numerous reports of cars being stolen, criminals were only stealing older model Honda Accords. In another area where cars were being stolen, people were too trusting and friendly (or perhaps forgetful and lazy) because they weren’t locking their car doors. In a couple of cases, people had their cars stolen right out of their garages because they had left their garage doors wide open!

Even if you think that you live in the nicest neighborhood in the world, and even if you in fact live in the nicest neighborhood in the world, crime is immune to that fact. Some things that you can do in order to protect yourself from having your vehicle stolen include making sure that you try to leave your car as empty as possible at all times. For instance, some people (and I have been guilty of this before) will leave valuable such as their wallet or their iPods and GPS systems, etc. in their vehicles…IN PLAIN SIGHT! This is just begging someone to come along and with one glance, see exactly what goodies you are tempting them to take.

Always try to park your vehicle in a well-lit area, and perhaps you should also invest in a car alarm. If you own a house, this may involve installing motion censored lighting on the exterior of your home as a way to deter criminals from entering the perimeter. There are all sorts of things that you can do to safeguard yourself against crime. That being said, what are you doing to prevent your car from being stolen?

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