This means keep your eyes UP and looking
down the road. Many drivers focus on the road only 5 or 8
seconds ahead. You should be looking about 15-20 seconds ahead
of your vehicle, farther if you can. This gives you the time
to recognize and avoid most potential hazards before they
become a problem. You'll see lane restrictions or construction
areas, traffic congestion, truck entrances, mishaps, etc.
This technique is also useful for new drivers when learning
how to steer. Keeping your eyes focused far down the road
(instead of just past the end of the hood) creates stability
in the roadway. In other words, it helps eliminate the unsteady
weaving that is one characteristic of a novice driver.
There are other important ways to use
your vision as a key tool for safe driving. Drivers should
see, and be mindful of, everything around them on both sides
and for several hundred feet ahead (about two blocks) and
also to the rear. Do this and you'll be able to see and avoid
the immediate hazards others don't notice: balls rolling into
the street followed by children, cars about to pull out from
parallel parking, pedestrians hidden between vehicles, runaway
trucks bearing down on you from behind, etc.
Here's another tip. Don't concentrate
on any one thing in your field of view for more than a second.
Your focused field of vision is very narrow, less than 5 feet
wide at 100 feet. Everything else you see is first picked
up by your peripheral vision, which is effective at picking
up motion but doesn't provide a clear view. If you don't believe
this, hold your watch arm out to its full extension, and bend
your wrist so you can look directly at your knuckles. Now,
while staring at your knuckles, try to see what time it is
without moving your eyes. While your watch is within your
field of view, your view of it is unfocused. For the purposes
of driving, you therefore need to keep your focused vision
moving in a scanning "pattern" so that you clearly
see everything that may affect your progress.
The importance of your peripheral vision
is that while it is not clear or focused, it detects movement—it
is your "early warning" vision. If you allow your
eyes to remain fixed on any one thing, your peripheral vision
immediately begins to narrow down into "tunnel"
vision—and you lose your ability to detect movement to
the sides. Keeping your eyes moving prevents this from occurring.
Your vision is perhaps the most important
tool you have while driving. Use it effectively! Look
as far down the road as possible, and use a scanning motion
to take in and analyze everything that is happening around
you or close enough to be a hazard.
<Rule
#11: Chill Out!
Rule #13: Create
Space!>
