[CharlesW]

By "blunders", the author includes both those which can be prevented (see section "Preventable blunders") and those which can't. This is one of the reasons this article is silly.

Next in the series is, "Avoid accidents: 80% of being a good driver."

[317070]

To be fair, you could stop calling them accidents. "Avoiding collisions" does sound like it will get you to 80% of being a good driver.

Like the author, I also play chess, and I could have written the same advice. Maybe the charitable take here is "Don't worry about long term plans so much, at least until you manage to stop making trivial mistakes, evaluated looking retro-actively at decisions you made."

[marginalia_nu]

Driving accidents are largely avoidable though.

If you avoid the wheel while tired or with alcohol in your system, you'll slash a big part of the risk. Avoid conversations in the car, on the phone or with your passenger(s), that's even more risk reduced. Keep your tires in good shape, your windshield clean, that's even better. Finally, if if you practice defensive driving, situational awareness, more still accidents can be avoided.

Nothing will of course mitigate all accidents, but there are definitely things that make you more or less accident prone in traffic.