Depending on your age, some of what you learned in your driver’s education classes may be massively outdated. This can increase your risks on the road and may lead to injury.
Take, for example, the old advice that you should put one hand on the wheel at 10 o’clock and the other hand at 2 o’clock. This was really hammered into people’s heads, mostly in an effort to keep them from driving with one hand. Having two hands at the top of the wheel was seen as the best way to keep control of the car.
But that advice likely started when many cars did not have airbags. These safety devices, even for those who took driver’s ED after they’d been invented, certainly weren’t in every car.
In 2020, though, the vast majority of cars have airbags in the wheel, and every single new car that gets manufactured has one. This means that putting your hands in front of the place where the bag deploys is actually dangerous to you. In an accident, the airbag can blow your arms off of the wheel, taking away any control, injuring your arms and potentially causing you to strike and damage your own face. It also reduces the effectiveness of the airbag itself since your body is now striking your arms, not just the bag. As such, you may want to drive with your hands simply spread apart a bit more. This feels unnatural for many who learned the other way, but it’s safer.
This is just one example of how driver safety has to keep up with the times and innovations in the market. If you get injured in a crash someone else causes, you may be able to seek compensation for your losses.