Driving is something that we do every day, but most of us don’t do everything we can to drive safely. More than 30,000 people are killed on America’s roads each year, and thousands more are injured. Many of these fatal crashes could be prevented if people would learn to drive more safely.

This isn’t a complicated subject – in fact, there are things you can do right now to reduce your chances of dying on the road.

One of the biggest driving safety problems in the United States is distracted driving. This is exactly as the name describes it – people don’t pay attention to the road because they are doing something else. This can be as simple as having an absorbing conversation in the car, or sightseeing rather than looking at the road. However, one of the biggest problems is when people use their cell phone while driving – this accounts for a significant proportion of all distracted driving crashes. In many places in the United States, it isn’t actually illegal to use your cell phone when driving – but just because you can do something, that doesn’t mean that you should. In fact, even though you can’t be held criminally liable for using your cell phone in many states, if you crash while using your cell phone you will end up losing a lot of money in the civil suit that follows.

Another thing to look at is the safety of your car itself. Some cars withstand the impact of crashes better than others, and there are also differences depending on the type of crash. The next time you buy a car, check out which one is the safest. This doesn’t mean that you need to pay more for a safer car – as you will see if you look at this TrueCar on Twitter. What it does mean is that you need to do a little research before making your purchase. Fortunately, this is relatively easy – the NHTSA carries out crash testing on a wide range of vehicle makes and models, and publishes the results online.