It’s long been said that one of the most dangerous areas of any driver is an intersection. The accident rate at intersections is just so high, and you can be seriously injured despite the relatively low speeds.
Have you ever wondered why this is? Let’s take a moment to examine some of the risks so that you may be able to avoid them.
It’s a complicated place to drive
First off, going through an intersection requires you to do many things correctly. You need to check your mirrors, consider traffic in multiple directions, manually, make the turn properly, apply the right amount of braking or acceleration — and do all of this at the proper time, depending on the type of control: A sign or a light. Even if you do this correctly, another driver making one mistake in any of those areas can cause an accident.
You must switch roads or cross through lanes of traffic
Even if you just go straight through an intersection, you have to cross through lanes containing perpendicular traffic. If you turn, you have to switch from one road to another, forcing you to drive in front of other cars or merge into the flow of traffic. In short, no matter what you do, you interact with cars driving in a different direction than you, and that will always be inherently more dangerous than driving with only vehicles heading in the same direction.
Have you been involved in a crash?
Getting through an intersection successfully requires others to drive as well as you do. If they make mistakes and injure you in a crash, then you need to know how to seek compensation for your losses.