I Skipped My Morning Check and Sat in Bumper-to-Bumper Traffic

I’ll admit it. This morning I was running late. I grabbed my coffee, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door without doing the one thing I do pretty much every morning: checking my dashboard.

About ten minutes down the road, I ran into a wall of brake lights. Bumper to bumper, as far as I could see. No way to turn around, no side road close enough to help. I just sat there with my coffee getting cold, thinking, “You know better than this, Keith.”

Nobody got hurt. I was late. That’s it. But it’s a good, low-stakes reminder of something I talk about all the time on the show: awareness only works if it’s a habit.

The two-minute habit I skipped

Every morning, before I leave the house, I pull up the BeAware dashboard at bepreparedsolutions.co/beaware. It’s where I get the headlines, the traffic, and anything else I need to know before I start my day. It takes a couple of minutes, usually less.

Behind that quick look, BeAware watches more than 20 official sources and matches what they report to my address: weather warnings, emergency alerts, utility and internet outages, evacuation or shelter-in-place orders, area closures, and police and EMS activity. It also has evacuation routes built in.

So on a normal morning, that one check tells me whether anything out of the ordinary is going on around me before I commit to the road. Is traffic backed up? Is there weather moving in? An area closed off? Something that tells me to leave early, take a different route, or keep an eye on things?

This morning I skipped it. I just went.

Small misses are practice for big ones

Here’s why this matters beyond being late. Traffic is a nuisance. But the same habit that saves you twenty minutes in a jam is the habit that gives you a head start when something serious happens.

Think about the situations that actually put families in trouble. A storm that turns roads into rivers. A wildfire that closes the main way out. A chemical spill that shuts down part of town. A power outage that knocks out traffic lights across the county. In every one of those, the people who knew first had the most options. The people who found out when they hit the roadblock had the fewest.

If you only check when you “have time,” you won’t check on the mornings it matters, because those are usually the mornings you’re rushed.

Build it into your routine

The trick is to make the check part of something you already do, so you don’t have to remember it. A few ideas:

• Check while the coffee brews. By the time it’s ready, you’re done.
• Turn on alerts by text, email, or WhatsApp so the important stuff comes to you, even on the days you forget to look.
• Know at least two ways to get to work, school, and home, and drive the backup route every now and then.
• Keep your gas tank above half, so a long delay or a detour isn’t a problem.
• Keep a few basics in the vehicle: water, a snack, a phone charger, and a light jacket. Sitting in traffic is a lot easier when you aren’t also hungry and cold.

Don’t beat yourself up

I’m not sharing this because I think one missed check is a big deal. It isn’t. I’m sharing it because I think it’s honest. I do this stuff every day, and I still slip. You will too.

The goal isn’t to be perfect. The goal is to make the good habits easy enough that you do them most days, and to notice when you skip them so you get back on track. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be checking before I grab my keys.

Try it for yourself

If you want to build this habit, BeAware has a free seven-day trial, no credit card required, at bepreparedsolutions.co. Set up your address, turn on your alerts, and give it a week of morning checks. See if it doesn’t become part of your routine.

Two minutes in the morning beats twenty minutes in traffic. No fear, no gatekeeping. Just common sense.