Reduce crashes in inclement weather with thoughtful defensive driving!

Corporate South Africa is assisting with road safety awareness through internals campaigns and self -regulation! we would like to share a few road safety tips sent by Eskom to all employees encouraging them to be safer when driving in inclement weather:

Dear Colleagues

DRIVING IN INCLEMENT WEATHER

Rainy weather conditions are still expected for most of the country in the next few weeks, which could result in most roads being in a bad state. With that in mind, please consider these few tips that, if applied correctly, will help keep you safe.

Be aware of the following safety tips for driving in the rain:

Inspect your vehicle

• Make sure your windscreen wipers are working correctly, and replace cracked or old ones.


• Check your tyres, and make sure that you have sufficient tread to ensure effective grip on the road. Tread disperses water, which is critical in rainy driving conditions.

Allow extra time

• Plan ahead, and leave early, so you have sufficient time to get to your destination without having to speed.

Slow down

• Driving more slowly allows you to observe more details. When it rains, oil and grime on the tarmac rises to the surface, making the road slippery.


• When you drive slowly, the contact period between the tyre and the road surface is greater, and this improves road handling.

Increase your following distance

• It is difficult to stop or brake suddenly on a slippery road. Make sure that there is plenty of room between your car and the car in front of you.


• You should be able to see the back tyres of the car in front of you.

Turn on your headlights

• While the law does not require you to have your headlights on at all times, it is good practice to keep them on to increase your visibility.

Do not use cruise control

• Using cruise control during wet conditions is dangerous because your vehicle could easily start to do what is known as “aquaplaning”. This is when your wheels automatically speed up the moment they lose traction, and this can cause you to lose control.

Do not drive through flooded areas

• Only a few centimetres of water are enough to lift and move a vehicle. Flooding can occur on highways and roads within moments of a heavy downpour. Also be aware of low-level bridges.

Avoid fallen or hanging power lines

• If, for whatever reason, your vehicle is in an incident and comes in contact with a power line, stay inside the vehicle, and use your hazards to draw the attention of other road users while waiting for help to arrive.

Stay close to the middle of the road

When driving in the rain, try to stay as close to the centre of the road as possible. Puddles can form on the edges of the road, and you never know how deep these may be. They could be big potholes that could damage your vehicle.

Pull over correctly

• If you decide you cannot drive safely in a severe storm, move completely off the roadway, and turn your lights and hazards on.

Please share this message at your meetings, and encourage staff to tell their stories and have a discussion about these incidents. Also share the message with your family and friends.

Supervisors must communicate this message to all employees, including those without access to computers.

Prepared by:

Sustainability Systems (Occupational Health and Safety – Operational Safety)

Also view:

Safe Driving in Bad Weather

Safe Driving in Heavy Rain

Reduce crashes in inclement weather with thoughtful defensive driving!

Keeping both your hands on the steering wheel will reduce road crashes

Driver safety is a topic that has been discussed and improved on over many years, but the statistics show that one of the biggest causes of road accidents is driver distraction, either by a passenger or by an electronic device.

The future can foresee safety devices which cut off your phone calls, silence the radio and monitor the weather, via intelligent windscreen wipers, as insurers step up their hi-tech efforts to turn us into better drivers and reduce the number of accidents. However, connectivity will never go away, and a total ban on phone usage is not likely, well, not in the near future anyway. Our Phones have become a part of us, and we will not turn it off just because we are driving., in fact with the Navigational apps now available, we actually need them to help us find our way to our destination.

The Mobile Phone is also contributing to Security and Peace of Mind. Knowing that it is permissible to use a cellular phone while driving reduces worry and stress while contributing to peace of mind. The ability to achieve virtually instant communication, whether from or to a driver, provides the driver a psychological reassurance that unexpected events of the day can be managed effectively and that worries related to uncertainties can be resolved by instant news conveyed through a phone call. The added sense of security may arise when traveling alone, at night, in poor weather, in a crime- ridden parts of town, in an unfamiliar location, or at any moment when the driver is feeling vulnerable.

The new technology is not something you can roll out to all cars in a flash, and as the cars generally in South Africa are more than 5 years old, new initiatives like black boxes and so on will not hit the South African market anytime soon, and when it does it will only be in the absolute premier cars.

Looking at statistics and key findings from research carried out specifically on the effects of mobile telephoning on driving performance demonstrates the following. Broekhuis, Vries and Waard research results show clearly that subjects who operated the hands free telephone showed better control over the test vehicle than the subjects who operated the handheld telephone, as measured by the steering wheel movements.
http://altmetis.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/root/1991/effects/

Gray & Schunn research on predicting the effects of cellular-phone dialing on driver performance finds that manual dialing results in deviations much greater than any of the other method with an overall pattern of lower deviations for voice dialing. https://www.cs.drexel.edu/~salvucci/publications/Salvucci-CSR02.pdf

The real-world implications of driver performance studies are certain. Drivers may become aware of the risks entailed in using a cellular phone whilst driving, either through their own intuition, through what they learn from family members, friends and the media. There are a range of tools and technology to assist in mounting phones correctly, as well as using handsfree enabled features which are available on a large majority of mobile phones on the market today. 84% of the Mobile Phones offer handsfree dialing, maps, as well voice activation. Only 17% of the cars in South Africa are bluetooth enabled

These results clearly document some detrement in driver performance that is associated with use of a cellular phone while driving. But clearly demonstrates that when correctly mounted and not hand held, driver ability improves. The answer to this question is very clear, that correct mounting and ease of hands free usage results in improvement in overall drivers performance.

Also view:

Avoiding Distractions while Driving

Hands-free Distracted Driving and Road Safety

Find more info on the devices below at www.carmatepro.co.za

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Keeping both your hands on the steering wheel will reduce road crashes

2016 Ford Mustang GT350 Prototype Spins, Practically Crashes at the ‘Ring [Pictures]

Automotive spy shots are hard to obtain. Even though some companies just parade their cars around, most actually want their future products to stay secret. So receiving the photographs means getting in precisely the appropriate location at just the proper time, plus possessing a finger on the shutter button as the target car whizzes by. And even if every little thing falls into spot, photographers are fortunate if they nab a lot more than a couple of excellent angles. And then there’s the case of this camo-wrapped 2016 Mustang Shelby GT350 prototype. 

Ford’s test driver place 3 wheels off the Nürburgring’s hallowed pavement proper in front of our shooter, sending the car into a beautiful pirouette on the track and providing us a terrific view of the vehicle from all 360 degrees. Thanks, guys!

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Wearing extremely little camo, as effectively as what appears to be production side sills and rear-end detailing—complete with a diffuser and fat quad pipes—the 2016 GT350 appears the enterprise. Luckily, neither the purposeful bodywork nor the car’s driver have been broken in this incident, but with an estimated 550 horsepower from a higher-revving, naturally aspirated V-8, this may be a wilder horse than we anticipated. We must know precisely how wild soon, as we count on the Mustang GT350 to be officially unveiled in the coming weeks.

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2016 Ford Mustang GT350 Prototype Spins, Practically Crashes at the ‘Ring [Pictures]

Deliberate crashes force up your premiums

Road users are possessing their lives put at threat by unscrupulous criminals who stage accidents so that they can make fraudulent insurance coverage claims.

That’s the shocking image painted by the most recent fraudulent claims information from insurer Aviva.

It shows that the number of crashes caused deliberately (so that those involved could make insurance coverage claims for whiplash injuries) shot up by 51% last year – costing the sector far more than £10 million and pushing the price tag of cover up for all drivers.

Aviva says it has more than 6,000 motor injury claims linked to organised fraud activity. It desires stronger sentences to deter the fraudsters behind these avoidable crashes, referred to as “slam-ons”.

Stronger sentences

Tom Gardiner, head of claims fraud at Aviva, stated: “Stronger sentences will deter would-be fraudsters and assist to hold roads safer and premiums reduced for customers.”

The sharp increase in deliberate accidents does not just have an effect on your insurance coverage premiums, it also compromises your security – and that of your loved ones – even though travelling on UK roads.

Tragically, at least one motorist has currently been killed as a result of getting caught up in an accident deliberately caused by fraudsters.

And Aviva is worried that a lot more people will drop their lives if “slam-on” fraudsters are permitted to hold obtaining away with it.

Induced accidents

“The quick development of induced accidents on our roads is cause for serious concern,” Gardiner stated.

“Fraudsters are prepared to put the security of innocent motorists’ and their households and passengers at danger for their personal individual obtain.”

Deliberately staged accidents also divert public services such as police vehicles and ambulances away from those in genuine want.

And the travel disruption and delay that ensues in the wake of an occasion has obvious knock-on effects for enterprise efficiency and personal convenience.

Preventing fraudulent claims

Fraudulent insurance claims involving deliberate crashes are not the only ones becoming far more common.

Figures from the Association of British Insurers show that the total number of dishonest insurance coverage claims in 2013 jumped 34% to 59,000 and expense insurers £811 million.

This enhance is 1 purpose the Ministry of Justice plans to tackle the so-referred to as compensation culture of “ambulance-chasing” lawyers and bogus whiplash claims by giving new powers to courts.

Under the proposals, courts will be able to throw out compensation actions exactly where claimants have been dishonest, and insurers will be in a position to use improved health-related assessments to weed out inaccurate whiplash claims.

Solicitors and other claims farmers will also be banned from offering accident victims incentives such as funds or iPads to encourage them to make a claim.

Influence on premiums

The aim of the Ministry of Justice’s plans is to lessen insurance fraud and cut the cost of premiums for sincere buyers.

Even although typical premiums have dropped by about £100 a year not too long ago, they could be a lot reduce if insurers paid out less for fraudulent claims.

We will, of course, have to wait and see how much of an influence the new guidelines have if and when they come in.

Post-crash costs

However, the good news for drivers is that the Competition and Markets Authority is also organizing to introduce measures developed to preserve premiums down.

These consist of a cap on the quantity at-fault insurers have to pay out for courtesy vehicles for innocent parties, which at the moment push premiums up by as significantly as £180 million a year.

The CMA will announce concrete proposals in September following a period of consultation over the summer time

Deliberate crashes force up your premiums

Video reveals mayhem caused by road crashes on the roads of India

A regular visitor to the Arrive Alive website shared the above video revealing the mayhem on the roads of India! This also provides some insights as to why road crashes are such a threat to commuters in India!

We can only imagine how expensive it must be to acquire car insurance in India!

View Video

Video reveals mayhem caused by road crashes on the roads of India