3 Road Trip Safety Tips For Traveling On Freeways

If you ever plan to travel somewhere within your own country, you may find yourself wanting to drive rather than fly or take a train or bus. Taking a road trip through an area is a great way to see all that is has to offer on your own timetable. And while road trips can be a little more flexible than taking a plane or other form of transportation, they also can be dangerous. So to help you stay safer while out on the road, here are three road trip safety tips for traveling on freeways.

Take Care When Merging

To get onto a freeway, the first thing you’ll have to do is merge. Although this is something that most people learned when doing their driver’s training, you’d be surprised how many people have forgotten how to safely merge onto a freeway or who just choose not to follow the best practices. According to TopDriver.com, the three tips you need to safely merge onto a freeway are to get up to speed with the flow of traffic, look for an open space to merge into, and not hesitate once you’ve decided to move. If you fail to do any one of these three things, you’re putting yourself and the drivers around you at risk.

Stay To The Right

Another freeway driving rule that many people don’t follow as closely as they should is staying right except to pass. Especially when there are multiple lanes going the same direction, it can be tempting not to stay in the right lane. But according to Jason Kavanaugh, a contributor to Edmunds.com, staying in the right lane—unless you’re passing a slower car—is going to keep you safer on the freeway and help improve the flow of traffic. When those around you aren’t following this rule, it can cause build ups in traffic, which can result in you having to pass on the right.

While passing on the right is inherently more dangerous than passing on the left, you should take extra care if you have to pass a semi-truck on the right. Semi-trucks have a much bigger blind spot than other vehicles, which could keep them from seeing you and result in a truck accident that you definitely want to avoid.

Change With The Weather

Regardless of what the speed limit on the freeway may say, if the weather is bad, you have to adjust your driving accordingly. Alex Deborgorski, an ice road trucker and contributor to Real Simple, shares that in snowy, icy, rainy or foggy conditions, you should always reduce your speed by at least five to ten miles per hour as well as keeping your headlights on and being careful when it comes to braking.

To help you be safer on your next road trip, consider using the tips mentioned above when you find yourself cruising down the freeway.