Here's a few general principles I use.

• Notice near misses and any aggressive manoevres you have to make. Any violent manoevre that you have to make is quite possibly an accident if anything additional goes wrong. Ask yourself what caused them, and if there was anything you could have done differently to make the incident less dangerous. This includes cases where the other driver is principally to blame ! Basically, treat near misses like aircraft do - think of it as an accident that you luckily didn't have, and try to find some way to avoid depending on luck next time.

• Don't do things that nobody else will expect you to do. Doing something that nobody else is doing is dumb, not just because there might be a good reason not to do it, but also because nobody else will expect you to do it, and they may not allow for it. Follow the crowd unless you really know you're out there by yourself. This obviously includes driving faster than everyone else, or stopping suddenly (if you don't absolutely have to) etc.

• Never let your car go where your brain and observation haven't been first. Drive to a complexity level that you can handle - if too much is going on, slow down until you can cope again. In my own driving, I guess I travel at the posted limit about 50% of the time - and when I'm going slower than that, it's normally because of the needs of brain and observation. If you don't have time to think about what you're doing, you're going too fast.

Similarly, schedule distracting things into time slots where not much else is happening on the road. Aggressively ignore any distraction that will take you over your complexity threshold. Stay off the phone as phone callers won't allow for your driving situation - and avoid visual imagery as you literally can't see while you're imagining something visual.

• Give some (not too much) thought to how you'd feel about flattening some child who runs out in front of you. Maybe it was mostly their fault - but you are going to wonder what you could have done differently, and if you were really driving in a way that kept the risks reasonable. In residential areas, car parks and so on, react to the chance of a child you can't see.