Staycationing somewhere this weekend? Whether you’re heading off for a last-minute getaway or you’ve been planning a trip for months, these simple tips can help you stay safe and enjoy your journey. The below tips can be very useful to prevent personal incidents and injuries that can lead to accidents, disabilities or a loss of life.
1. Prevent Distracted Driving
Safe driving and avoiding distractions are important whenever you’re behind the wheel, and especially if you’ve rented a car to drive in an unfamiliar area. Distractions may include texting, talking on a phone or anything that causes you to lose focus on the road ahead and driving conditions.
Help reduce the chances of an accident by staying focused and alert — make necessary adjustments to your vehicle before you start driving, tell your other passengers to keep noise levels down and don’t respond to calls or text messages while you’re behind the wheel.
2. Plan Your Routes Ahead of Time
You might want your roadtrip to feel like a spontaneous adventure, but it’s good to have an idea of where you’re going, where you’re staying, what sites you plan to visit, restaurants and rest stops along the way so you can plan your driving route carefully. Maps applications can help you plan ahead, so you can avoid getting lost in an unsafe area.
3. Let Map Apps Guide You While Driving
Even if you plan your driving routes ahead of your trip, navigation apps like Waze or Google Maps can help keep you on track with voice directions while you’re driving. If
you take a wrong turn, most apps will recalculate and help get you back on track, so you don’t have to worry about looking at a map or having your copilot read off directions the whole time. Another bonus, these apps often include navigation adjustments based on real-time construction, road closures or accidents.
Pick up a car mount for your cell phone that attaches to your vehicle’s air vent before your trip so you can stay hands-free while driving.
Make sure your rental car experience is a safe one, so you can save yourself time, money and stress.