How do I become a calmer, safer driver?

You arrive at work already furious, and the reason is a grey hatchback that drove slowly, or an exit you missed, or a sun you drove into, or a car behind that leaned on the horn. Seven pages in this library are about the small decisions that make up a drive, and the shape they share is a rule set once before the car moves, and doing less at the moment you most want to do more.

Signal, then brake, so the car behind knows why. Signal before you brake is built from thirty conversations and 422 accounts, and nine separate conversations say it in the same order. The reason is not the turn; it is the car behind, because a brake light says only that you are slowing, and a signal put on first tells them why, so they ease off instead of swerving or sitting on the horn. Two conversations say to signal on an empty road too, because that is how the habit gets built for the day you need it. Four separate conversations draw the distinction that fixes most signalling: an indicator is not a description of what your hands are doing, it is a statement of where you intend to go, sent early enough for other people to act on it, and one account puts it as intention, not permission. Two cautions in the safety line are the other half: a signal warns and does not buy the space, and if someone will not let you in you yield rather than force the move. The page checked two countries’ rules and names only those two: the British Highway Code says signals must be given in plenty of time, having checked it is not misleading to signal at that moment, and cancelled after use; California and New York law require the signal to be shown continuously for the last hundred feet before the turn. Where you drive is yours to look up. And if the indicator has started clicking fast, nine conversations say that is a lamp out on that side; walk round the car with the hazards on.

If you miss the exit, take the next one. Let the missed exit stay missed says the missed exit is a finished mistake, already behind you, and its entire price is a short detour one person cheerfully rebranded as accidental sightseeing. The dive across three lanes is a new mistake, made at speed, in front of strangers who have no reason to expect it. Its cousins are all worse: stopping dead in a live lane, reversing along a shoulder, the three-lane diagonal with a turn signal as apology. The fix on that page is a decision made in advance, because nobody reasons well at 65 miles an hour with a ramp disappearing in the mirror: said once, calmly, in a parked car, “if I miss it, I take the next one.” The navigation works for you, not the reverse, and it will reroute the moment the exit is truly gone.

Give the slow driver a birthday cake to carry. Give the slow driver a cake to carry comes from thirty conversations and 417 accounts, and sixteen separate conversations do the same thing to the crawling car ahead: decide there is something fragile on the passenger seat, a cake with no lid, a goldfish in a bowl, a grandmother, and that is why. Four conversations use the rude version on the fast and swerving driver, that they need a toilet, badly, and four accounts say the joke is what makes it stick. Fifteen conversations say who the trick is for, and it is not the driver, who will never know; it is you, who arrive calmer and forgive your own bad days more easily. Three conversations add the rule that keeps it honest: once, for a first offence, and a pattern uses the story up. Seven contraindications stand above the trick and they say one thing: the story is for your head, not for the road. A dangerous driver, tailgating, weaving, far too slow in a fast lane, still gets your brake and your distance, because two conversations and two cautions rated high say an explanation is not an excuse; do not drive at all if you are too angry, too tired or impaired; and two contraindications and four cautions, two of them rated high, are for the reader who has been hurt before: if you have a history of abuse, or live or work where malice is common, do not let “assume the best” stop you setting a boundary against someone you already know to be harmful. Whether assuming the best makes you kinder or makes you a mark is the argument that page cannot settle, three accounts to three, and it carries both camps.

If they are driving, hold your reply. If they’re driving, hold your reply is one person’s observation about the other end of the text. When someone sends “I’m driving right now”, the polite, loving, completely automatic reflex is to send something back, “ok”, “drive safe”, and the phone on the passenger seat lights up again, and the person you care about glances down at highway speed to see what you said. You cannot control the glance. You can simply not trigger it, for free, every time. If the silence feels cold, the page’s fix is one sentence said once: when you’re driving, I go quiet; talk when you’re parked.

Slow down when the sun is in your eyes, and stop if you have to. Make the sun a tie-breaker draws on twenty-seven conversations and 427 accounts, and its safety line comes first: the United Kingdom’s Highway Code, rule 237, says if you are dazzled by bright sunlight, slow down and if necessary, stop, and driving guidance in the United States gives the same steps, slow down, leave more room to the car ahead, headlights on so others see you, and keep the windscreen clean inside and out, because dirt and streaks turn a low sun into a wall of light. Sunglasses help, ten conversations say, and three accounts say they are not enough when the sun sits on the horizon. The trick the page is named for is real: twenty-three separate conversations say that living east of work puts the rising sun behind you on the way in and the setting sun behind you on the way home. It is also, thirteen conversations say, a small thing next to what a home costs, how safe the street is and how long the drive takes, so the page carries it as a tie-breaker between two otherwise equal homes and never as a rule. Four conversations say it does nothing for anyone on a night or early shift, and three say living east moves the glare rather than removing it, onto the number plates and bumpers of the cars ahead.

Know where you are before you need to say it. The exit number is the mile marker says that on most United States interstates the exit number is the mile marker, so the difference between two exit numbers is the distance in miles, and the small green markers run the whole length of the road. The reason it is worth knowing is the safety line: if you break down or come across a crash, give the emergency operator the road, the direction you were travelling, and the nearest mile marker, which puts you inside a mile on a road where every stretch looks the same, and it works when you have no idea what town you are near. The page names its limits: none of it transfers outside the United States, and New York and the New England states have historically numbered exits in order, so if the numbers are running consecutively where you are, the arithmetic does not apply.

The maintenance schedule is the owner’s manual, not the sticker. The manual outranks the sticker says the windshield sticker is a sales schedule and the manual is the engineering one, and that a modern car given that boring list on time routinely runs past 200,000 miles. The 3,000-mile oil change is a standard from older engines and older oils, kept alive because frequent visits are a business model; the manual states the real interval for yours, with the manual’s own fine print for severe use, and the page’s honest exceptions: short trips, and the calendar, because a low-mileage car still wants fresh oil roughly annually. The money that page protects mostly is not oil money: the transmission that died at 90,000 because “lifetime fluid” was read as chemistry instead of marketing, the engine destroyed in one instant by a timing belt with a replacement mileage nobody looked up, the rocker panels dissolved by five winters of un-rinsed road salt, the rotor ruined by a brake pad that squeaked for two months first. Track your fuel economy per tank, the page says, because a sudden drop is often a mechanical problem introducing itself politely, while it is still cheap.

Who this is not for, and what these pages leave open. If you ride a bicycle or a motorcycle, the signal page says much of its conversations was not about you. If you have no choice of where to live, the sun page says it is mostly not for you, and what it carries for the driver who cannot move is thin and names its gaps. None of these pages tells you how to handle a driver who cuts you off after you signalled correctly, what the signalling law is where you drive, or how many crashes glare causes; each names those as gaps rather than guessing. The first follow-up below is this library’s page for the car behind you that will not back off.