Defensive driving is a set of skills that are developed and ingrained through a specialised driving training course that helps you as a driver to anticipate and recognise potential risks and take the appropriate action.
In turn, these well-informed decisions, based on training and education, help make you a safer driver and improves your management and control of a vehicle – particularly in emergency situations – so as to minimise any potential danger.
What Does Defensive Driving Teach?
Available in Auckland, defensive driving courses help drivers to identify and manage a series of negative psychological factors that can negatively impact one’s driving ability and increase the risk of a road accident. Some of these factors might include fatigue, stress, emotional distress, and rage – otherwise referred to as road rage – which can severely impact one’s judgement.
Defensive driving courses teach drivers to have a more positive attitude when on the road and help drivers improve their ability to focus on their driving abilities.
Some of the things that are focused on include the development of situational awareness skills and visual acuity skills. Typical defensive driving courses include topics such as understanding braking distances, how to anticipate them, and how to understand the forces surrounding cornering and how to do it safely depending on the car, the corner and the speed in question.
Defensive driving courses also help drivers to understand and empathise with the human factor involved in driving cars. This might involve being able to anticipate other drivers’ mistakes.
Defensive driving courses also help you to perceive hazards and anticipate them in advance before it’s too late, as well as how to mitigate distractions and navigate them successfully. Such courses will also help you better understand the performance of your vehicle and how to overtake safely so as not to over or underestimate the ability of the car you’re driving as well as the other cars on the road around you.
Various other techniques are also focused on, such as proper steering, proper braking and accident avoidance techniques, manoeuvring at low speeds, as well as the ability to visually scan and identify your vehicle’s position within the context of the road.
Defensive driving courses are not designed for advanced driving or specialist driving, and, as such, they do not include high-speed and aggressive driving techniques. For example, a defensive driving course won’t teach you how to drift around corners or how to drive off-road, nor will it teach you pursuit techniques or chauffeur techniques. It won’t teach you how to reverse with the trailer, either.
However, defensive driving courses can be extremely useful as a stepping stone towards courses that do teach such advanced techniques, should you wish to progress to those levels.
Benefits Of Taking A Defensive Driving Course
Aside from the obvious benefit of being a better driver and thereby improving your safety on the road and decreasing your chances of an accident, defensive driving courses can help you reduce the time it takes to get your full licence.
Should you take the defensive driving course with a restricted licence or a learner’s licence, you can reduce the time it takes to get your full licence by six months if you’re under 25. If you’re older than 25, it will be reduced by three months.
Street Talk’s defensive driving course is a nine-hour course including four classroom sessions and one In-car session.
For that short amount of time spent, you could save lives, including your own.
Learn defensive driving in Auckland today. Contact us at Thomas Driving School to sign up!