What can t be said about driving in the dark? It s inherently more dangerous than driving during the day because there is less light to illuminate our pathways. Years and years ago, people didn t bother going out at night because they didn t have cars. They had horses and buggies and kerosene lamps: hardly the equipment that you d want for a midnight run to the coffee shop! Nowadays, however, and with the invention and progression of technology, we live in a much more mobile society. Living in this lap of luxury affords us the opportunity to get up in the middle of the night and drive across the country if we want to. However, driving in the dark is still just as dangerous if not more dangerous than it was all those years ago.
If you are comparing and contrasting driving today with traveling years ago, you have to take at least one thing into consideration: there were a lot less people back then. Today, we live in a society where there are massive cities jammed with millions of people, and most of these people own cars. It certainly doesn t take a genius just the keen observer to notice that each and every day between the hours of 7am to 9am and between 3pm to 6pm, we cram ourselves onto the highways to get to and from work. It s simply a fact of life now. If there were a way to magically reduce the number of people on the roads so that we could coast along as we liked, I m sure someone would have already thought it up. All of this is suffice to say that driving during the day is dangerous in and of itself because there are so many people now. As an alternative, many people who are going on long road trips or who need to get somewhere other than work will opt to leave at night because they know that most people are sleeping versus behind the wheel of a car.
Driving at night is dangerous in and of itself because a) there are still more people now than there were years ago, b) it s dark and c) because it is dark, your reaction time is significantly decreased since you can t see something until it comes into your field of vision provided by your headlights which in the case of a deer or wild animal is often too late. It is for these reasons as well as others that we need to exercise vigilance and due caution when we are traveling by car in the dark. An additional threat that we have been dealing with and continue to deal with are people who use drugs or consume alcohol only to get behind the wheel of a car. It doesn t take an expert to figure out that anyone who is even remotely impaired and behind the wheel of a car at night poses a great threat to the safety of others as well as their own safety.
Be aware of your surroundings at all times while driving especially at night. If at all possible, try to run the majority of your errands during the day or in an area that is well lit if you must drive at night.