Environmental and defensive driving
This domain tests two related habits: driving so that you rarely need to react, and driving so that you waste as little fuel and cause as little damage as possible. The two overlap almost completely, because smooth anticipation is both safer and cheaper.
Defensive driving
Scan well ahead, twelve to fifteen seconds at speed, and keep an escape route in mind. Assume other road users have not seen you, especially at junctions and where motorcycles filter past. Cover the brake when approaching a junction or a market area. Keep a space cushion around the vehicle so that a mistake by someone else does not become your collision. At night, in dust or in rain, reduce speed so your stopping distance stays inside your visible distance.
Reading Guinea-Bissau's road conditions
- Unpaved laterite roads develop washouts, loose gravel and corrugations; speed turns them into loss of control.
- Dust from a passing lorry can reduce visibility to a few metres; slow, use dipped lights, do not overtake into it.
- Rainy-season flooding hides depth and can hide a collapsed shoulder; do not drive into water of unknown depth.
- Livestock and pedestrians appear without warning on rural roads; a blind crest is a speed decision, not a surprise.
Eco-driving
Accelerate smoothly and upshift early; keep tyre pressures correct; remove unnecessary loads and roof racks; avoid prolonged idling; plan your route and combine trips. A serviced engine with clean filters burns less. Eco-driving is not slow driving: it is steady driving with fewer hard braking events.
Worked example
You approach a blind crest and see fresh animal droppings on the road. Reason it through: the droppings show livestock is nearby, the crest hides the far side, and you cannot stop within the visible distance at your current speed. The correct action is to slow before the crest so that you can stop within what you can see. The clue converts an invisible hazard into a foreseeable one.
Traps that cost marks
Equating eco-driving with crawling; driving through floodwater to keep momentum; treating priority as an absolute right rather than something you can yield to stay safe; and overtaking into a dust cloud.