Every Behavior Is a Choice: Avoiding the Six Deadly Driving Choices
September 18, 2026
You can only control your own behavior. That is the premise the defensive driving training starts from, and it is the useful one, because the six behaviors that cause most preventable collisions are all choices.
Deadly choice 1: Speeding
Speeding increases braking distance, which increases total stopping distance. Stopping distance is three things added together:
Perception distance + Reaction distance + Braking distance
Speed inflates the last one disproportionately, and it also reduces the ability of road structures, guardrails, barriers, crumple zones, to protect the people inside the vehicle.
How to avoid it: know the speed limit, read the conditions to decide what speed is actually appropriate, and manage your schedule so you are never making up time. A driver who leaves late has already made the choice.
Deadly choice 2: Following too closely
The leading cause of rear-end collisions, and a form of aggressive driving even when it does not feel like one.
How to avoid it: the three-second-plus rule. Three seconds in ideal conditions, more in anything worse. Pick a fixed object, count from when the vehicle ahead passes it.
Deadly choice 3: Distracted driving
Three kinds, and most distractions are more than one at a time:
- Manual: hands off the wheel
- Visual: eyes off the road
- Cognitive: mind off the task
A typical distraction lasts about four seconds. At speed, that is a long way traveled blind.
How to avoid it: make a plan before you move. Route set, phone stowed, climate sorted. It is easy to become distracted while driving, and much harder to undistract yourself once you are.
Deadly choice 4: Turning improperly
Improper turns lead to aggressive driving from others and to collisions directly. Cutting a corner, turning from the wrong lane, turning without signaling, or turning across traffic that had right of way.
How to avoid it: signal early, position correctly before the turn, and yield when yielding is the correct call rather than the inconvenient one.
Deadly choice 5: Backing improperly
A large share of parking-area collisions happen in reverse, and in our work parking areas are hospital entrances, clinic bays and residential driveways with people walking through them.
How to avoid it: avoid backing where you can by parking so you pull forward. Where you cannot, walk the area first, use mirrors and cameras together rather than either alone, and go slowly enough to stop instantly.
Deadly choice 6: Changing lanes improperly
Blind spot collisions and sideswipes come from lane changes made without a full check or without enough signal.
How to avoid it: mirror, signal, blind spot check, then move. In that order, with the signal on long enough for someone else to act on it.
Why this matters more in transportation
In a private car, a hard brake is an annoyance. In a vehicle carrying a passenger recovering from surgery, someone traveling reclined, or a passenger who cannot brace, the consequences of each of these choices land on someone who did not make them.
Every ReliaWheels driver completes the National Safety Council defensive driving course alongside CTAA PASS passenger assistance training, Crisis Prevention Institute de-escalation training, and Red Cross CPR, AED and basic First Aid.
Every behavior is a choice. We would rather our drivers made those choices deliberately.
Read about driving with us, or call 440-468-6976.
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