The First 15 Seconds of Your Car Rental - Learn why it is important to familiarize yourself with your rental before leaving the parking lot.

If most auto accidents occur within one mile of the departure or destination site, then most car rental auto accidents must occur within a few hundred feet of the car rental parking lot.

We’ve all done it – hopped into the rental vehicle, started it up, headed out into the streets, then, in the midst of airport traffic with busses bearing down on you, taxis nearly swiping you, and trying to read utterly illogical signage, you start groping for knobs, posts, and buttons for directional signals, headlights, windshield wipers, window controls, defroster/heat/AC controls, the radio seek button…

As you get your bearings, you find yourself making every error of every bad driver you’ve ever hated. To help you find your way into the big bad world in your next gutless rental car, we present our guide to The First 10’ (and 15 Seconds) of Your Car Rental.

Check The Car
Check for scratches, dings, tears. If the car rental agent is circling your car with a pad making notes of scratches and blemishes, make sure you do the same. I’ve rarely failed to find a scratch or two that the agent missed, and if they're going to hold you to this process, you should do the same in return.

Start The car
Start the car. Although it wastes gas and pollutes, you might find that allowing the car to warm up is a good call. It also affords you the opportunity to make sure the car is running fairly well, with no strange noises. Everyone takes a good look for scratches and dings so they won't be charged upon return, but rarely check how the car is running.

Heat and AC
Find and turn on heat/AC. This will allow the interior heat up or cool down depending on the season while you get your bearings. A dark blue Neon is going to be blistering hot in the summer; turn on the AC and let the car cool down while you continue your orientation program.

This way, when you’re consulting your map, fixing your mirrors, adjusting the radio, fishing for window controls, hitting the wrong directionals, trying to find the windshield wiper lever, driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll be comfortable.

Check Your Map
Consult your map. Car rental lots are often inconveniently located in the outer reaches of the airport loop road organism; if you take a wrong turn out of the lot, you may find yourself back at the baggage claim before you know it. Most car rental agencies will give you a map of the area that pinpoints the location of the rental lot. Before you do anything else, take out and consult this map, and formulate your intended route out of the car rental void and into the world. Do this yourself - as the driver, you need to know the lay of the land. Next, hand the map to a copilot if you have one, who can conceive any enhancements to the plan.

This way, when you’re fixing your mirrors, adjusting the radio, fishing for window controls, hitting the wrong directionals, trying to find the windshield wiper lever, driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll know where you’re going.

Mirrors and Radio
Fix your mirrors. A quick adjust to the rear view won't do it; you gotta deal with the side mirrors. If you’re traveling with someone, they can help. This will save you some heartbeats when you first have to merge into heavy traffic.

This way, when adjusting the radio, fishing for window controls, hitting the wrong directionals, trying to find the windshield wiper lever, driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll be able to see.

Figure out the radio. Despite the nonessential nature of the radio, this may be the most important step. In fact, advocates of cell phone usage note that more accidents are caused by drivers tinkering with radio dials than when using cell phones. (In my case, the only accident I’ve ever caused occurred when I rear-ended a police car while rooting around for a cassette tape.)

For the quickest approach, turn on the radio, figure out how to program stations into memory, find the seek button, and move on.

I encourage you to take your time with this – although the corporatization and franchising of radio has rendered the public airwaves almost vanilla and samey from coast to coast, some vestige of regional character remains at both ends of the dial and on both bands. And while Howard Stern can still be found in the FM power strip in every city, so can some local oddball with a huge record collection.

And we all know you gotta get your groove on in a new city.

This way, when you’re fishing for window controls, hitting the wrong directional, trying to find the windshield wiper lever, driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll be jamming.

Window Controls
Window controls. When you arrive at the first tollbooth and you’re fishing around for the controls, and doors are clicking open, windshield wipers going on and off, rear windows going up and down, you’ll thank me for saving you the embarrassment.

This way, when you’re hitting the wrong directionals, trying to find the windshield wiper lever, driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll have some fresh air.

Turn Signal
Directionals. This one is usually pretty straightforward, and will be exactly where you expect it to be. With all the ergonomic “improvements” to auto interior spaces that have forced me to write this article, the location of the directionals has changed very little since I was learning to drive.

This way, when you’re trying to find the windshield wiper lever, driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll be able to change lanes without getting smacked.

Windshield wipers
Windshield wipers. Do this before you figure out the lights - as the sun sets, you’ll have plenty of time to figure out how to turn the lights on and off. If it starts raining suddenly, you’ll be opening and closing windows (unless you followed directions above for window controls), turning lights on and off, hitting the blinkers, opening the fuel latch.

This way, when you’re driving at night without lights, driving with your high beams on, opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll be able to see through the windshield.

Lights
This is a two-step task.
1) Find the on-off switch. Then, when an approaching police car starts flashing their lights at you to turn on your own lights, you can do so before they're past you, and they won't turn around and pull you over.

2) Figure out the high beams. This one so that, when you turn on your lights and the high beams are on, you can turn them down. Also to give a “thanks!” or "go ahead, I'm lost" flash to the guy who cut you a break when you were trying to figure out how to drive this high-tech Neon.

This way, when you’re opening the trunk instead of the fuel latch when buying gas, and driving with the emergency brake on, at least you’ll be able to see a car length in front of you.

Fuel Tank & Latch
Fuel latch. Save yourself embarrassment at your first fill up at the pump by figuring out where the fuel cover latch is right now.

This way, when you’re driving with the emergency brake on, at least you won't be driving with your trunk open.

Emergency Brake
Emergency Brake. Is it on? You don't want the car rental employees to pick up the smell of burning brakes even before you leave the lot. Find it and release it. This way, you might actually appear to know what you’re doing. Put the car in gear and head for the exits! Head out the driveway, and into the driving world.

Remember These Questions
Say, “Darn it, which way do we go again? Where's that map?!?! How do you put this window down? Could you fix that mirror?” Repeat... Got it? Remember, it can get worse!.