As school starts again, we want to raise awareness about how we can all make the traffic a bit better. Our city is growing at a rapid pace and if we expect miracles from others, the traffic will never be bearable. Please give a thought about the following good habits and let’s make our roads safer for all of us.
Use Your Signals – How do you “tell” the car next to you that you want to change lanes, direction, or you want to stop? How do you “talk” with people in traffic? Simple, by using your signals. Using light signals should be imbedded in the fabric of every driver. How many times have people cut you off and stepped on your nerves? But when you see a signal, you are aware and informed of the change/move that the driver wants to make. How many times has someone slammed the brakes for no reason and then turned, endangering everyone around? If every driver uses their signals, it will make a big difference for our traffic.
Merge Lines – When you are on the highway and you race a car that is trying to merge, where do you think the merging car can go when the merging line ends? Have you ever wondered why most of the accidents you see on the highway are at the merging lines? Please adapt your speed and be courteous and mindful at the merging lines, make sure your speed is different, and that the merging car can safely get into main traffic.
Turn Your Lights On – Our cars have a lot of automatic futures, but please, get into the good habit of turning on the switch for your lights every time you are driving. When all your lights are on you are visible and safer, as we all know the weather in Calgary can change in a split second. There are countries that have made it mandatory to have the lights on when driving, justifying that even if there’s strong daylight outside, when you have the lights on you are visible and if other cars are parked around, people know your car is moving (we are talking about crowded residential streets here and in some places, we are not far from that). We’ve all seen cars with no lights driving at dawn, at dusk, and even more dangerous, in the middle of the night – don’t be that driver.
“Talk” to everyone in traffic, be visible and respectful, and don’t use merge lines as a racetrack, there’s enough space for everyone on the streets. Let’s all get home safe.
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