Planning a long journey 

Planning a long journey in the car. Here are some hints for safer motoring:

1. Plan your trip well in advance. Consider the time of day that you're travelling and the route you plan to take. When driving, you need to pay maximum attention to road conditions and you can't do this if you're too busy looking at maps and worrying about exactly where you are.
2. Before setting off, check your vehicle's oil, water, windscreen washer fluid and tyres.
3. Plan stops along the way but DON'T use your stops for drinking alcohol. To avoid becoming too tired, you should aim to take a break from driving every two hours.
4. When stopping, give yourself and your family time to stretch. A stop of five to ten mintutes will help prevent children from getting too scratchy and becoming a distraction.
5. Think up some activities to entertain passengers (particularly children) to stop them distracting you. DON'T choose activities which involve too much reading as the eyes-down position can cause car-sickness.
6. Try to keep up with the traffic flow but keep your distance. Remember the "two second rule". As the vehicle ahead of your passes a fixed object such as a power pole, start counting "one thousand, one hundred and one, one thousand, one hundred and two". If you pass the fixed object before you've said "two", you're travelling too close.
7. If you are being tailgated, indicate and move to the left of the carriage way. It is perfectly legal to do so.
8. If towing, keep a constant look-out at what's happening behind and take every opportunity to let faster vehicles pass you. You might be surprised at just how courteous these drivers can be. Don't say to yourself "once I get over this hill I can get up to 120kph". The vehicles behind you will be able to travel at a steady speed whether they are going downhill or up.
9. When travelling in a stream of vehicles, DON'T suffer from "highway hypnosis". If you follow the car in front of you blindly, you are placing reliance on the reaction time of the person driving it. By constantly scanning the road ahead and to the side for yourself, you can anticipate and react to potential hazards even before the car in front has seen them.
10. If you haven't read the Road Code for some years, a good look at an up-to-date version may be beneficial. Visit the Land Transport website to review the Road Code.