Req 1 — Preventing Impaired Driving

A crash rarely starts with the impact. It usually starts earlier, when a driver looks down at a phone, gets behind the wheel after drinking, pushes through exhaustion, or makes a beginner mistake without realizing how fast the risk is growing. This requirement covers four ways judgment gets weakened before a vehicle ever leaves the lane.

• 1a — Distraction: what steals a driver’s attention
• 1b — Alcohol, drugs, and other substances: what changes reaction time and judgment
• 1c — Fatigue: what happens when a driver is too tired to be safe
• 1d — New-driver mistakes: what inexperience looks like on the road

Requirement 1a

Looking away for only a few seconds can mean traveling the length of a basketball court without really seeing the road. A distracted driver is dangerous because driving is not one skill. It is many skills happening at once: steering, scanning, judging speed, reading signs, watching mirrors, and predicting what everyone else might do next.

Common distractions

Five common distractions are easy to spot:

• Phones — texting, scrolling, calling, or using maps without setting them first
• Passengers — loud conversations, horseplay, or turning around to deal with people in the back seat
• Food and drinks — opening wrappers, balancing drinks, or cleaning spills
• Music and controls — searching playlists, changing volume, or adjusting climate controls too long
• Objects inside the vehicle — reaching for something that fell, checking a backpack, or looking for sunglasses

Distraction can be visual (eyes off the road), manual (hands off the wheel), or cognitive (mind off the task). Texting is especially dangerous because it combines all three.

How distraction causes crashes

A distracted driver may miss brake lights, drift out of a lane, roll through a stop sign, or fail to notice a pedestrian entering a crosswalk. Distraction also makes reaction time worse. If the brain is busy reading a message or arguing with a passenger, it notices danger later and starts braking later.

How to reduce distractions before the trip starts

Requirement 1b

Alcohol and drugs change the very abilities driving depends on: judgment, coordination, reaction time, attention, and self-control. A person who is impaired may feel confident, but confidence is not the same thing as control. In fact, impairment often makes people worse at noticing how unsafe they have become.

How alcohol affects driving

The Traffic Safety pamphlet explains that blood alcohol concentration, or BAC, measures the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. In all 50 states, 0.08 BAC is the legal standard for intoxication, but impairment begins well before that. The pamphlet notes that measurable effects can appear as low as 0.02 BAC, especially in judgment.

Alcohol can:

• slow reaction time
• reduce coordination and balance
• make distance and speed harder to judge
• narrow attention so drivers miss hazards at the sides of the road
• increase risk-taking, like speeding or following too closely

How other substances affect driving

Not all impaired driving looks the same.

• Cold medications may cause drowsiness, slower reactions, or blurred thinking.
• Prescription drugs can affect alertness, balance, vision, or focus, even when used legally.
• Illegal drugs may distort perception, slow reactions, or cause overconfidence and poor decisions.
• Mixed substances are especially dangerous because alcohol plus medication or drugs can multiply the effect.

State laws you need to research

This part of the requirement is local. You should look up three things for your own state:

1. the legal BAC limit
2. the penalties for DUI or DWI
3. the state’s open-container law

The pamphlet gives you a starting point: many states suspend or revoke licenses quickly after an arrest for DUI or for refusing a BAC test, and open-container laws usually ban open alcohol containers in the passenger area of a vehicle. Penalties often include fines, license suspension, classes, community service, and possible jail time.

Requirement 1c

Fatigue is tricky because a tired driver may look fine right up until something goes wrong. Sleep loss weakens attention, slows decisions, and can cause brief lapses called microsleeps — a few seconds when the brain partly shuts down. At highway speed, that can be enough time to drift into another lane or off the road.

Warning signs of fatigue

Drivers should take tiredness seriously if they notice:

• repeated yawning
• heavy eyelids or trouble focusing
• missed turns or forgotten miles
• drifting within the lane
• slower reactions to traffic changes
• trouble keeping a steady speed

Planning to stay alert

Safe transportation starts before the trip.

Requirement 1d

New drivers are still building automatic habits. That means simple tasks take more mental energy, leaving less attention for surprises. The most common beginner mistakes are not just “bad driving.” They are signs that a driver is overloaded, underprepared, or overconfident.

Common new-driver mistakes

• Following too closely leaves no room to react.
• Driving too fast for conditions reduces control, even if the speed limit is higher.
• Fixating straight ahead causes missed hazards in mirrors, side streets, and crosswalks.
• Late braking or hard braking can lead to rear-end crashes or skids.
• Poor lane changes happen when drivers skip mirror checks or shoulder checks.
• Overcorrecting can send the vehicle into another lane or off the road.

How to lower the risk

Practice works best when it is specific. A new driver should practice in daylight, bad weather, night conditions, parking lots, neighborhoods, and higher-speed roads with an experienced adult. That variety builds judgment instead of just steering skill.

Driving behavior and insurance rates

Insurance companies look at risk. Drivers who speed, crash, drive distracted, collect tickets, or make expensive claims are more likely to cost the insurer money. That usually means higher premiums. Safe habits do the opposite. A clean record, lower-risk behavior, and driver education may help reduce costs over time.

The safest drivers are not the ones who think they are naturally talented. They are the ones who build careful habits on purpose. Next, you will shift from the driver’s choices to the vehicle’s built-in safety systems.