First, let's be absolutely sure we know what an accident is. An accident is something that is unavoidable - and I can't really think of an accident that can happen whilst driving; even a sneeze or falling ill whilst driving is usually preceded by some warning.

I can think of lots of things that cause collisions though and whilst instructing during driving lessons in Hull every day I see situations that come close to creating one and I doubt if you could find any experienced driver who hasn't witnessed a collision and regularly sees near misses. Collisions are caused by poor drivers! It is unfortunate that many drivers' sole tactic for avoiding collisions is a "head in the sand approach" and drive around thinking "it'll never happen to me". I imagine that many of them buy lottery tickets every week thinking "it could happen to me", and I do know that the odds of being involved in a collision are much greater than the chances of winning the lottery.

It's a sad fact that most drivers have no real perception of their own ability - when did you last meet someone who didn't think they were a good driver? But if you ask any driver what is the standard of most drivers on the road I think their answers would generally be uncomplimentary.

It's interesting to note that my local police force (and several others) no longer refer to RTAs (Road Traffic Accidents) but now talk about RTCs (Road Traffic Collisions), I think this is in an effort to make drivers more aware that referring to collisions as accidents seems to provide an excuse for their lack of road skills - calling collisions by their proper name may make the driver pause and assess his actions and hopefully improve their driving habits so a repetition can be avoided.

So, I can't answer the question "how do you avoid an accident"? But I do have a good way of avoiding collisions:

Collisions happen when:

• 2 or more drivers do something they shouldn't (or don't do something that they should).
• At the same time.
• At the same place.

Avoiding this situation is easy - simply remove one of the above factors; and the easiest thing to remove is one of the drivers - ourselves.