Henry Barnes, a legendary traffic engineer who served many cities over many years, made this comment in his autobiography, "The Man with the Red and Green Eyes," "traffic was as much an emotional problem as it was a physical and mechanical one." This course on driving safety tackles the emotional problems - and ignorance of traffic laws - as we try to help you become a safer, better, more informed driver.

As we all know, Texas roadways are getting busier and more congested. Traffic safety is the responsibility of all drivers. Every time we get on the road in a vehicle, we're not only taking our own lives in our hands, but the lives of others around us as well. We use motor vehicles more than any other form of transportation in the U.S. Motor vehicles have given us an exceptional degree of mobility, but with this come risks.

The objective of this lesson is to help you understand the traffic safety problem and give you a sense of responsibility for its solution.

The Department of Public Safety has identified the five leading causes of motor vehicle collisions as:

• Driving at unsafe speeds (under or over the speed limit)
• Failure to yield the right-of-way
• Driving under the influence of alcohol
• Disregarding stop and go signals
• Following too closely
  

We will discuss these five topics later in this section.