STAY CALM AND FEARLESS
Have a relaxed mindset, and never panic during your night driving. Being fearless and sticking onto the road rules would make you half a way through the journey. We have seen some new drivers, who panic in some situations causing them to applying break forcefully, shaking the gear leaver to know in which number of gear they are in or clicking the viper blades or indicators coming in action when they panic. Try not to be that, stay calm and do your actions.
Keep your windshield clean. Remove off the stains, dried drops, smudges, finger prints, dust and greasy matters to have a clear vision of the road in the night driving glare. First, lift the vipers from the bonnet using your hand and de-dust it, then pour a sufficient amount of water all over the windshield and allow draining. Now, use your viper gear to clean the windshield by squeezing the detergents stored under the hood. Following these steps will make you to avoid mild scratches on your wind glasses and have a clear vision on the road.
Applying the viper as such to clean the windshield may swipe up the dirt and mud particles accumulated around the blades and can cause permanent scratches on your windshield.
GLARY NIGHT VISION AT NIGHT DRIVING
Additional care should be paid for car driving, especially by the beginners to moderate skilled drivers during night times, than during the day. Driving the car at night times seems to be a scary part for many drivers due to the glary vision of the opposite vehicle that leads them blind for some microseconds when passing by. Keep in mind, glary visions are the main dangers of driving at night.
For this, avoid seeing the light beams of the opposite vehicle and concentrate on the road space required for the lively movement of your car during the exact crossing time of the opposite vehicle. While crossing, if you are not sure about the road, don’t apply, but be ready to pedal on the brake, particularly when you travel on the road where you handled some patches and damages already.
LOW/HIGH BEAM LEVER
Use your high and low beam indicator wisely. Use high beams at night driving only when you see no cars on the opposite side. Flipping from low to high beam for a while can actually help you in finding the pot holes, humps, broken ridges and the damaged roads even at long distance with a shadowed vision.
Pull down the high beam to low level to make your nearby road visible while you pass the opposite vehicle on the same road. This on the other hand, indicates the opposite vehicle driver to do the same, so that both the drivers may have a better vision in low beam (some drivers don’t obey this and no need to worry about it). If you head other vehicles coming opposite continuously, try to be in the low beam position. This will help the opposite driver to have his vision properly without your high beam.
KEEP YOUR VISION LONG
Keep your eye sights long to the end of the road covering almost all the area of your road. Try to understand this. When you drive in dark, try to keep your sight sticking to the regions as your car head lamps explore new areas of the roads. Actually, this will help us to have some time to react when we find some abnormalities on the roads like, humps, potholes, speed breakers and etc.
PARKING LIGHT FOR ROUGH ROADS
Roads are always associated with patches and damages contributing to small to large damages to the vehicle. In some bad cases, a neat, smooth road ends all of a sudden and continues to be a bad, damaged roads with pits and hard rocks. This is often faced during the night driving time causing the car more vulnerable to hurt, especially when you drive at a constant high speed. When you face such situation, slowing your car immediately may harm your car, as the vehicles following you don’t expect this from you. In such cases, switch your parking light in one hand and this can indicate the drivers coming behind you to control their speed without hitting your car’s back.
I have tried this many a time where I felt safe.
Especially, when you lead on a road followed by three or four vehicles behind you at constant speed wouldn’t expect you to stop or slowing suddenly for a bad scenario in the middle of the road unexpectedly. Sometimes running your car on the damages roads is better than getting hit by the rear following vehicles.
If you want to stop your car crisply in such cases, cut down your speed from 100 km/h till it reaches to 60-50km/h and release the brake and re-press the brake pedal hardly once again will make your car stop safely. Not to harm your co-passengers, give signal to your passengers on emergency braking.
SLEEPY DRIVERS
Sleepy drivers are really the dangerous giant in the roads of both day and night driving whom we need to get rid of. But more often, the vulnerability is higher at night times due to less traffic and perfect time to sleep, especially for those who are tired of driving from long distance. Even research has been done on this and found that tiresome drivers take micro sleep for 6 to 10 seconds without their knowledge.
Giving a short horn during overtakes, particularly for long vehicles like trucks, lorry, buses and etc., would add another layer of safety for you. Pressing the horn for twice would make the truck driver to have a notice on you and your activities.
OVERTAKE USING OTHER CAR WINDSHIELD
Sometimes we see groups of vehicles flocks together on overtaking heavy loaded or long vehicles. In such situations, based on the chance of crossing one another, you may have to remain in the flock by driving at slow speed for a while. Later the group gets disperse as vehicles move ahead overtaking one after another. In such cases, we might continue to stay in the same lane, while one or two other vehicles of same lane direction would move to the opposite lane to overtake. If you are among the one behind the vehicle travelling in the opposite lane, it is more responsible job for you to have your safety.
Sometimes the overtaking vehicle would come back into its own lane, while heading another vehicle on the opposite lane. Also, the overtaking driver may have time and space only for his vehicle to pass on, where you might end up in trouble following him on the opposite lane. This generally happens to many drivers when they lose their patience in staying in the flock of vehicles for some time. During overtakes, as you have a vehicle before you, try to see through his windshield to get an idea about the opposite lane vehicle. This can actually help you to have some extra time to decide to slow down or coming back to your lane again
SHORT HORN SOUNDS
Give short horns at regular intervals (pom pom pom) than pressing the horn to give a long press (poooooooom). This might sound funny, but it actually works. Especially, when we get in contact with other roads passing across or the road that connects to the highways. Giving such short horns would make the people to notice about your car coming being ready to cross the road.
Some roads are broad for long distance and later divides into two roads, while a short half a meter height divider separates two roads which has blurred marking or with no reflector stickers. This type of dividers is risky specifically when they start after coming down from a bridge. All kinds of such problems are not such a big problem in daylight, however, in the night driving, especially when we travel on the new roads, it is highly important. So beware of short divider.
TURNING ROADS AND BAD CURVES
Turning roads are actually a trap for us, it seems simpler than they actually appear. This is not about the hair-pin bending where we would not be at a pace of speed.
When you don’t get the vision of the bending road, for sure be alert and bring the speed down is on the safer side. Never misjudge the road curve for our safety measures. At times, some open land roads have some treats like, that we might not know whether the road bends to the right or left until you reach closure. Make sure you stick on to the lane and pull down the speed in such situation without being panic.
EMPTY WATER BOTTLE
Having juices and beverages on travel might add a great value for the journey, however small bottles of less than a litre may cause some trouble if it is on the floor unnoticed in dim light, as they may run in between the three pedals. But no need to remember a horror scene whenever you see a pet bottle in the car, rather just keep an eye on them when you are handling them.
BE A REAL HERO
When you feel sleepy, never hesitate to leave the driver’s seat for the sake prestige or fame. A real driver never takes chances in collapsing the whole happy journey or the fun of driving a car. Feeling tired and sleepy after a long continuous drive is actually a human nature and some of us really feel shame telling we feel sleepy and handing over the car to our spouse or friends. Most accidents happening at night time are higher due to lack of sleep of the drivers which is bad for us and others too.
