Get into good driving habits

Habits can be easy to pick up and hard to break — especially bad habits. They can be ingrained and sometimes subconscious, and we don’t even realise that we’re doing them.

The habits we’ve picked up through lockdown, such as staying in our slippers all day, can be easier to break.

But habits we’ve had prelockdown, such as the way we drive and treat each other on the roads, are trickier.

For some people being in lockdown hasn’t had any effect on breaking bad driving habits.

I’ve seen bad habits such as failure to indicate, backing out into traffic without regard for others, frustration, speeding and general bad behaviour.

Getting back into the driver’s seat after about seven weeks out

Common sense suggests we take things easy until we are feeling more confident.

of it, combined with the dangerous winter conditions, may feel daunting for some people and even the most experienced drivers might feel a bit uneasy.

Common sense suggests we take things easy until we are feeling more confident.

With two deaths on our region’s roads within in the first two weeks level 2, police say extra caution and sensible driving is needed now.

Queen’s Birthday Weekend starts tomorrow and it will be the first long weekend out of lockdown.

People will surely relish their newfound freedom to get away and see family and friends, but caution is needed.

It may be the first time some people have been behind the wheel and taken to the open road.

There were six deaths and 22 serious injuries on New Zealand roads last Queen’s Birthday Weekend — but many more lives impacted as a result of those crashes.

So far this year, there have been 113 road deaths, 10 of them in our region.

These are devastating numbers.

Bay of Plenty roading manager Inspector Brent Crowe says traffic volumes have increased this week — and with that came higher speeds and crashes.

He’s right, it’s a numbers game. Let’s not go back to our old habits and end up where we were pre-lockdown.