It is a great plan to invest in life and disability insurance policy Malaysia to financially secure yourself should you survive at the cost of your own hampered bodily functions that are severe enough to not let you go about your life as easily as usual. However, what is more immediate than insurance is the awareness of your own safety, and your responsibility of upholding it on the road.
Car accidents often happen due to carelessness and the different speeds travelled by different cars. If you compare this type of accident to trains, they aren’t the same in terms of frequency. Although train accidents still happen, speed isn’t really a main factor as they travel more or less at the same speeds, so you will likely be involved in a train accident if there is a malfunction in the system or a big foreign object is sitting on the tracks.
So even with insurance, there are a few practices that you must always do on the road to reduce the risk of getting into a crash and probably escape alive but crippled for life.
Lower your speed
In highways, you should not speed more than 120 kilometers per hour, or kmh, when you are not close to a car in front of you or there are none at all. You must also stick to the left or middle lane, and never the right unless you plan to take over a vehicle like a lorry or bus, then come back to the middle.
Lowering your speed on highways is also important so you wouldn’t be captured by speed cameras ahead of you. If you do not ever get caught by the police for speeding, and the next time you go into a JPJ branch, they may remind you to pay a fine that you accumulated for speeding on a highway.
Speed is far more important when you are not on a highway. In city streets or the neighbourhood, you must never speed up at all and moderate them. Buildings, pavements, people and other road obstacles will be prominent to you, so be careful to not bump into them.
Be predictable
A predictable car is a safe car. Cars behind yours will never be able to guess whether you are going to turn left or keep going straight ahead. Signal lights are built for this reason, so use it very often on the road. More importantly, plan ahead when you are driving. You do not want to turn the left or right signal at the last second only for the car behind you to frantically brake.
Speaking of braking, you must also brake early when you are going to stop at a junction or behind a car in front of you. Gently apply the brakes and slow down until you are at a close yet still relatively safe distance from whatever that is in front of you. Do not brake suddenly.
Meanwhile, the moderation of speed is still emphasized here when you are driving with the vehicle in front of you. You must keep your distance so their unpredictability does not catch you off guard enough to bump against the boot.