When you are driving somewhere with your family, please remember my Five Mom-Inspired Driving Tips. I am always worried about myself and other moms driving on the road and at the many distractions we face today, verses twenty years ago.
1) Make sure your children are securely buckled in their car seats.
- Sometimes I let my four and two and a half year old climb into their own car seats, and then I go to open my door, and remember that I forgot to buckle one, or both of them in. Very rarely does this ever happen. But every so often my four year old will scream at me "Mom, you forgot to buckle me in!"
2) Don't let anything, or anyone distract you from driving.
- Don't have the radio up too loud. I know that when I am driving in the car with my children, that I sometimes forget to do this. But we should all keep our radios down this way we will be able to hear any emergency vehicles, police cars, or trains crossing the train tracks.
- Let your cell phone ring, or your cell phone beep when text messages come through. You can check it when you stop at your destination, or you can find somewhere safely to pull over to check it. More and more people are talking on their cell phones and driving, and they are causing some major accidents on the road. Just today, my neighbor, and older woman, was holding her cell phone against her ear with one hand and smoking a cigarette and trying to steer the car with the other.
- If your children are fighting, screaming, or crying in the vehicle, then find somewhere safe to pull over before you reach, or look in the backseat to try to deal with them.
3) Listen to your own Woman's Intuition
When you feel uneasy about making a right or left turn, or about driving through an intersection right when the light turns green, then wait a few seconds. Double and triple check the lights, and where the other vehicles are and where they are going. Then proceed through the intersection or make a turn when you feel that it's safe to do so.
4) Always check the weather before you leave your house.
- This way you know if you and your children need to be wearing jackets, rain boots, mittens, etc. Plus, you will know what to expect while your driving, rain, snow, sleet, hail, tornadoes, or the bright sun. I know that sunlight brightly reflecting off of another vehicle can be blinding at times, and make it hard for me to see where I am going.
5) Always keep an emergency kit in each one of your vehicles.
- Make sure this kit includes road flares, matches, flashlights, batteries, a small battery operated radio, jumper cables, blankets (one for each person in the vehicle, twin size or bigger), bottles or gallon sized jugs of water, grocery bags, a few rolls of toilet paper, snack foods, and whatever else you feel might come in handy for you and your family. We always keep blankets in our vehicles for us and our children. We live in middle Tennessee, and you never know when you might get stuck on the freeway, in a snow storm because of a major accident. Once your vehicle is parked and there is no where for you to go, you are stuck, and your heater isn't going to work forever, especially if it's not going anywhere.
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Disclosure: I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Esurance blogging program for 8,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points. For more information on how you can participate, click here.
