Last year I learned to drive again after a 10-year break. I was surprised how dramatically cars had evolved in that period; I learned to be way lighter on the gas and brake, and whenever I used a rear-view camera to park, I felt like I was cheating.

I didn’t learn this: it’s no longer ideal to hold your steering wheel at '10 and 2.' According to experts, in a crash you could seriously injure your hands by driving in this position.

Giving your kid swimming lessons is a smart move, but you can't just relax the moment he passes all his safety tests. It's one thing for a child to be a proficient swimmer in a pool (and even then, he's not drown-proof), but open water is a whole different beast. A new report from Safe Kids Worldwide gives some alarming findings, which you should take note of if your family will be hanging out near a lake, river or ocean this summer.

Accidentally leaving a child in a hot car is a tragic mistake that anyone could make. Blame our faulty brains, among other things. (And if you haven't read Gene Weingarten's 2009 Washington Post story on hot car deaths, make a point to do so - it's masterful.) As parents, the sooner we realise we're not insusceptible, the sooner we can all look for ways to end the devastating statistic that an average of 37 children die in hot cars each year, without judgement.

Hello from beautiful, sunny Sydney, where the morning's rainfall managed to drop the equivalent of November's average monthly rainfall in just two hours. The torrential rain has managed to flood roads, bridges and houses, and has shut down much of Sydney's public transport network. Here's what the rain has done to Sydney and its surrounds.

Children's car seats are complicated. Their mechanisms can get clogged by a errant chip; they're hard to fit in the back seat; they don't work well with loose clothing. And after six to ten years, they expire.

Your pets breathe the same air you do. If you’re putting on a mask and taking precautions against bush fire smoke this summer, you should be taking precautions for your pets as well.

A high-quality HEPA air purifier can eliminate nearly all the smoke, dust or allergen particles from the air in a room — but a $40 contraption can eliminate about 90 per cent. It’s worth a try if you need to clean your indoor air on the cheap.

Spiders aren't the most popular of creatures, especially in Australia where a lot of them can kill you (or at least, cause a great deal of pain). But one you don't have to fear, despite its intimidating appearance, is the humble huntsman, or sparassid. In fact, they can help keep pests in your abode under control.

Seeing the world is an enlightening experience, but it can also be a dangerous one if you're allergic to things like nuts, gluten, soy, lactose, shellfish, and others foods. That doesn't have to hold you back, though. Here are a few tips to help you travel and eat safely.

A surgical mask isn’t going to protect your lungs from bush fire smoke, so if you’re in a smoky area, make sure you have the right mask and you know how to wear it before its too late.

As wildfires continue to devastate parts of California, checking on friends and family in the area is often a difficult proposition. Thousands have had to evacuate their homes, and many of those evacuees are in situations where they might have limited access to the power for their phones to let people know they’re OK.

Lifting weights is often about the challenge: can I really lift this much? Or, I already lifted this for eight reps, but can I do a ninth? So you need to prepare for what happens if you fail.

There's still one month till summer, and if you've been listening to your more sun-sensitive friends at the beach, or had to go out to buy aloe on one too many occasions, it might have occurred to you to invest in a beach umbrella.

Follow your intuition on this; a beach umbrella is a great investment in your skin's future. But you may have also noticed that at least once a weekend there's someone running down the beach, chasing an open umbrella that has caught a strong breeze and is suddenly on the lam.

Lead is not something you want in your water, paint, food, or personal care products. You might not realise this, but lead acetate is found in a certain type of hair dye, on the basis of old studies that found it didn’t migrate from hair into the bloodstream. This week, the FDA finally banned it - which makes its continued use in Australia a bit of a worry.

Half of house fires happen between 11pm and 7am, a time in which most of us would not be conscious enough to know something’s going on. This is terrifying, but there’s an easy thing you can do to help you survive: Close your bedroom door before you go to bed.

If you're lucky, you'll never have to defend yourself through physical violence. But if that time ever comes, or if you're ever enrolled in a Fight Club against your will, would you know what to do? You've seen punches thrown on TV plenty of times, but do you actually know how to throw one correctly? We asked three elite martial artists and a boxer to share their best takedown tips.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to type in some stupid answer to a made-up question when creating an account on a new service. You know what I’m talking about: Forget your password, and you can regain access to your account by typing in the name of your first pet (Mr Mrglglrm), your favourite sports team (Saskatoon Sirens), or the street you grew up on (Third Street).

Spring is a great time to spend the day out on the lake. Leeches think so too. If you take a dip in your local lake and come out with a new gross friend, don't panic. Just follow the steps in this graphic to get rid of it.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband went through the childproofing checklists, making sure our home wouldn’t be a danger zone for a tot who believes the entire world is just waiting to be touched, climbed and licked. We crawled on the floor in a quest for potential hazards. We bid farewell to our sharp-edged glass coffee table. We bolted our chests of drawers to the wall, locked up our cleaning supply cabinet, and put safety covers on our electrical outlets. My daughter is five now, and still alive.