Think of all the cars, trucks and SUVs out there you can hit with your vehicle when pulling out of your Richmond driveway should your brakes fail. It’s a target-rich environment. Of course, who wants to hit anything with your car, truck or SUV?

Hitting things with your vehicle is the kind of thing most of us prefer to avoid. From Richmond to Timbuktu, accidents happen all the time. We all prefer they don’t happen to us or our loved ones. 

One way to avoid accidents is to drive safely and pay attention to the road. Many accidents occur because someone took their eyes off the road for a moment just as something happened that would require them to react. 

A child chases a ball into the street. The person in the car, truck or SUV in front of you almost missed their turn and decided to hit their brakes rather than go around and come back to their route. A deer runs across the road. A box falls off a truck in front of you. A car speeding in the other direction loses control and comes into your lane.

These are just a few of the scenarios that could require you to react quickly to avoid an accident. 

Let’s suppose that, as a responsible driver, you are strictly focused on your driving 99% of the time. If you put as many miles on your vehicle as the average driver does (14,263 miles, according to the Federal Highway Administration). A reasonable estimate is that a person putting on these many miles will average about 40 mph and drive for about one hour per day.

For someone who is strictly focused on their driving 99% of the time, driving one hour per day, they are strictly focused on their driving for 59.4 minutes each day. But, 0.6 minutes they are admittedly distracted.

Anyone who has driven for any amount of time knows that there will be occasions when they have to turn, increase speed and/or brake suddenly to avoid an accident or something in the road. It is simply inevitable. Now, if you apply the law of averages, if a child, a deer, a box, another vehicle or any number of other objects suddenly fall into your path while driving, we all hope that it doesn’t happen during that 0.6 minutes when you’re distracted.

Drive long enough and the odds that the unfortunate timing of a potential accident with a distracted driver will occur increases. One thing you do to mitigate this problem is to reduce the amount of time you are distracted while driving, preferably to zero. 

Don’t text, turn your head to tell the kids to behave or look at something a passenger is trying to show you. You’re driving – drive.

Another thing you can do to improve your odds in these situations is to make sure your vehicle is in optimal operating condition. And, for the sake of safe driving, this includes good tires, suspension, steering and begins with good brakes.

You want to be able to brake quickly when the need arises. Should you look away from the road just before a child runs into the street, if you have good brakes, you may still have a chance to avoid an accident. If your brakes are not up to par, the odds are growing long against you and that kid in the street, whether you’re in Richmond or somewhere between there and Timbuktu.