Hands at 10 and 2 o'clock on the steering wheel. (Check.) Adjust your seat so you can reach the pedals and buckle your safety belt (who cares how far you are from the steering wheel). (Check.) In a panic stop, make sure to pump your brakes. (Check.)
Those of you who graduated from high school more than 10 or 15 years ago may well remember these time-honored rules from your driver's education class. Chances are your instructor drummed those rules into your head.
Well, forget them. The old order changeth, even in the realm of driving a car. You might think, "How can the rules of driving have changed so quickly?"
Cars themselves have changed, that's why. Take steering wheel distance, for instance. Back in the old days, it didn't really matter how far away you were from the steering wheel. But nowadays, since the advent of airbags in all cars, manufacturers began recommending that people sit 10 to 12 inches away from the steering wheel, to lessen the chance of injury from an exploding airbag. Even modern airbags that don't deploy with nearly the force of the original models still require you to be the length of a folded-up sheet of paper away from the steering wheel.
Speaking of the steering wheel, watch your hand position. In the old days, your instructor might have told you to put your hands at the 2 o'clock and 10 o'clock position on the wheel. These days, you'll be told to put them at the 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock positions, with your thumbs on the top of the wheel. It’s a more restful place for your hands, and it allows you to have your hands in place for a new type of steering maneuver better suited to an airbag-equipped steering wheel.
In the old days, you were taught to make a right turn by having your left hand go up, down, and around, followed by your right hand crossing over your left hand to perform the same operation (the hand-over-hand method). Although very effective, there's one problem: your arm would always be in the center of the wheel, right where an airbag could pop out during an accident (and usually people are trying to turn to avoid a collision, even if they can’t). This can cause injuries to your hands, arms, or wrists—or even lacerations to your face from the ring on your finger. It's far better to keep your hands at 4 and 8 o'clock and push up with the left and slide down with the right, never letting your hands away from the wheel. This way you'll avoid having your hands in the wrong place if the airbag should have to deploy.
And if you're slamming on the brakes to avoid an incident in which the airbags might go off, there's now no need to pump the brakes, as you might have been told years ago. Most cars nowadays come with anti-lock brakes, so pumping is unnecessary—instead, the brakes "micro-pump" themselves, pulsing many times a minute, more than could be done by a skilled human operator. Just apply firm pressure to the brake pedal—you may feel the brake pedal pulse when the ABS system is working—and your car will stop faster and in a more sure-footed manner than the old manual way of pumping the brakes.
Via: Business Week