NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) has released two interesting preliminary reports this month.

The first reveals that “an estimated 16,290 people died in motor vehicle crashes” during the first six months of 2012.  The number represents a 9% increase in traffic deaths over the prior year, while miles driven during that time only increased 1.1%.  That 9% increase is the largest in recorded history over the first six-month period of any year.

The second report shows that seat belt use among vehicle occupants is up to 86%, a record high.  So, more people are taking advantage of safety technology in their cars, and more people are being killed in their car.  Now, the hippies and anarchists in the audience will no doubt tie the two together to reinforce their belief, however delusional, that seat belts don’t protect people and they have a better chance of survival remaining unbelted.  The truth is, seat belts save lives every day, and the risk of death quadruples if you’re ejected from the car in a crash.  There’s a common quote attributed to policemen who handle traffic crashes: “I’ve never unbuckled a dead man”.

So, if more people are buckling up and more people are getting killed in crashes, what’s going wrong?  Shouldn’t fewer people die if more of us are wearing seat belts?

According to NHTSA, the majority of vehicles involved in fatal crashes were going straight when they crashed.  Did you read that right?  Going.  Straight.  That means that most people are killed trying to drive in a straight line – what we pretty much assume to be one of the easiest tasks.  Why?

It all comes down to the choices we make behind the wheel.  You know that old idiom, “To Err is Human”?  It’s true.  We are all human beings, and therefore we all make mistakes.  The thing is, if we make a mistake at the grocery store, we come home without milk.  If we make a mistake at school, we get a lower grade on the test.  But if we make a mistake behind the wheel of a car in traffic, we can DIE.  Big letters, D-I-E.  Not too many other activities in life can kill you in a heartbeat if you goof.  Drivers, especially adults, tend to forget this.  As we gain experience driving, we tend to take the entire task for granted.  Here are the most common fatal mistakes drivers tend to make:

• SPEEDING: Far and away, one of the biggest contributors to fatal crashes is driving too fast for conditions.  This means either breaking the speed limit or not slowing down when conditions require it, like during fog, rain and in congested traffic.  According to one NHTSA report, speeding was a factor in 90% of traffic fatalities.
• DRUGS:  Not just alcohol, but even prescription medicine, over-the-counter cold and allergy treatments, even caffeine – all of them can impact your ability to drive safely.  NHTSA estimates drugs or alcohol contributing to 85% of fatal crashes.
• ATTENTION:  These days, our lives are busier than ever, and our driving suffers because of it.  Sleepiness was a factor in 91% of fatal crashes, and driving distractions were a factor in 78% of deaths.
• POOR SKILLS: In 85% of fatal run-off-the-road crashes, the driver over-corrected an error.  This mistake KILLED that person.

How prepared are you to drive?  Do you ever speed?  Do you ever drive while eating, drinking, smoking, talking, looking at your GPS or using your phone?  Do you ever drive tired?  If you do any of these things, you’re courting death behind the wheel.  If it hasn’t happened yet, you’ve been lucky.  And luck is not something to bet your life on, because sooner or later it runs out.

How are your driving skills?  Did you ever take professional driving instruction?  Was it just a classroom course or did you also take behind the wheel lessons?  How long ago was it?  If you’ve been driving for more than 5 years, ask yourself honestly:  could you pass both the knowledge test and the practical driving test for your state if you took them today without studying?

The “without studying” part is important, because you won’t be studying before you drive home this afternoon.  Pennsylvania passes new laws governing how you drive on their roads every single year, and lots of them.  If you’ve had your license more than 10 years, there are dozens of laws now that didn’t exist the last time you took the knowledge test.

How many drivers are experts at driving?  The magic number of practice hours to be considered an expert seems to be 10,000.  Think about that – if you drove for an average of 30 minutes every day, 365 days a year, it would take you 50 years to gain the proficiency level of a world-class expert driver.  Most Americans drive an hour a day on average, meaning that the average driver who got their license at 16 is just reaching their 10,000 hour mark around the age of 41.  And that’s if, every single time they drive, they’re actually trying to be a better driver, to improve their performance.  If that same person spends the whole hour drinking coffee and tweeting about traffic, that hour doesn’t count.  Given this, and the frequency of things like distracted driving, fatigued driving and reckless driving, most of us are not even trying to get to the magic 10,000 hours.

So, again, be honest with yourself:  what kind of driver are you?  Are you the kind of driver who doesn’t care about performance and is headed down a path toward a fatal crash?  Or are you using every hour, every mile, behind the wheel to hone your skill as a driver and stay alive as long as you can?

It’s a simple truth – if we’re talking about the violin, your life doesn’t hang in the balance if you don’t make it to the expert level.  The same just isn’t true for driving.