Every time I ride my bike for an errand or when traveling over a longer period or when driving in the city, I always think of a way how to think during those times. I am always looking for a way and teaching myself what I have thought about it. There are always things that run through my mind which divert my attention away from the road. Things that can cause me to become inattentive to the road and to everything in front of me. I said to myself, “this could be bad if this continues to happen”. With this running around my head, it becomes a little bit of an irony that it distracts me in the road ahead when I was thinking of ways not to be distracted for the ride. So, I always think of a way to prevent such a situation, and here’s what I thought to myself.
To me, there are at least for things that always guide me every time I drive my motorcycle. First, think that we are driving and should focus on what is ahead. It is a reminder that I need to pay attention to the road ahead of me. This is also a good call for my brain to focus on one thing, the road ahead, rather than thinking about something else. Though a bit dull and simple it may be but it gives me longer focus especially when the road is so familiar that I feel like it is a burden to pay attention to the road. But let us not stop right there, let us continue to what I next.
The next one is “Look in front of you”. Don’t get me wrong, the first one is to think that I am driving and never divert my attention to other things. Here, it is about looking at what is in front regardless of the conditions. It is me training my own mind to think in a way that signals to focus in front voluntarily. It may seem to b redundant to what we do naturally but to me by sending a message to focus in front and no other else will remove unnecessary awareness to all the ques of the surrounding. This means it lessens the burden on my brain.
The third one is “pay attention to the surroundings”. It is the thing that most people only think, of to pay attention to, yet in some cases, people can’t pay attention. So why is that? It is likely because they lack the two basic principles that support the latter. It is about self-awareness that I am driving, in my case, and it is about the focus I had in front of me. paying attention to the surrounding doesn’t mean I need to look through everything and everywhere all the time. It is not possible, where such information can’t be processed all in one go. Paying attention means listening to the surrounding, smelling the smoke and distinguishing it, telling the gradient change of lights in front of me which might be reflected from my back or some other sources, and many others. These are different variables and can be processed in one go, with all those information can be useful for the last factors that are needed in minding the road.
The last one is ‘think what other drivers think”. With all the information I got from the third factor, I will try to visualize and think ahead of time about what other drivers would do if I were in their position. It is one of the factors that need to be practiced the most and is most likely to be the one that I will be consistently learning throughout my whole life as long as I am driving. I am also learning with the best of my efforts to study those accidents and how and why it happens. The more accidents and incidents I observe the more I learn new things and it makes new ways and strategies on how to navigate the road safely. At the end of the road trip, I always recall and try to find some possible lapses that I happened and think of ways to mitigate, if possible to remove entirely, those lapses for the next road trip.
With these things in mind, still I am not certain what could happen next but at least it gives me a consistent framework on how to keep me and my family safe on the road. God bless to all and have a safe trip always.