Avoiding accidents in Paradise?

Introduction:

If you are new to Burnout Paradise or even the Burnout Series, these helpful hints will serve you well.
 
Learning the map will provide additional knowledge to recognize numerous options and routes in any incident.

Others, please add your tips as well, if it is not in the FAQs.
 

Avoiding accidents in a race (Where there is smoke, there is fire!):
In a race, the fastest car is only as good as the driver, in many cases even for the beginner, a medium speed car with perfect handling always will win a race more times than a newcomer with the fastest car.

1. So no matter what, break free from the crowd as soon as you can, Burnout is not an organized race, and you are lucky if you are racing with professionals that will not take you out when you are about to pass them.

2. Make sure to find the best route for your style of driving, be it on the shoulder, shortcuts, or a mixture of these and additional sidewalks. The best route is the route that allows for flexibility. You never want to limit your thoughts on staying on one path because you will not always go the route you want. You can miss a turn, wind up in a shortcut, or even worse crash and burn and respawn far off course.

3. If you see smoke, steer clear of it, a racer has just crashed and will most likely take you down.  Try to steer in the opposite direction, even if that takes you a few feet off of your path and avoid oncoming traffic. You can get back on course within a split second.  It's best not to lock yourself into a set path that is too predictable and allows no room for error. At the end of that foggy trail is a downed racer.

4. Cars care about themselves, not you. You may see the soccer (football) mom/mum driving her station wagon; she is not to be taken lightly just as the guy with the van, or the gentleman with the sedan or two doors. All cars are initially programmed to follow the road safely, try to avoid you if they can. Most of all they are obstacles with many glitches.
 

Avoiding accidents at an intersection:

Intersections are not as tricky as they look, they drive in the western way of driving. Make sure you know a few things before entering an intersection.  These few things happen in a split second, so be sure to drill it into your head so it can become second nature. After some time, you will not realize that you will have answered all these questions in half a second.

Your mind and instinct are key in Burnout Paradise unlike any paradise before it (Burnout 3 Takedown can be the exception for it requires the most skill for when burnout still had barriers, boundaries and the 'if you hit anything and you'll crash' mindset.)

1. What side of the street are you?
2. Which side of the road do you need to be?
3. Is there any obvious or potential obstacles?
4. Where is the cleanest route?
5. What are the chances someone may enter your path and throw you off course?
6. How will you get out of an incident while maintaining speed?

Wall riding can be your best friend at the right time, but almost never:

Back in Burnout 3 Takedown, wall riding was a huge no-no. The game had many rough areas and even the street would glitch on a flat surface and would send your car straight into the air; this was rare but always a consideration. In Paradise, this is a possibility, but the walls can save you more times than they can hurt you if you look for the right ones.

1. The texture of surfaces, the speed of your car, and the angle of the oncoming object concerning your vehicle is into consideration.

2. Flat metal walls, can slow you down while keeping a good set speed if you need to stop before coming to a turning point in a route at high speed.

3. Walls can also be used to bounce back at a racer that tried to make you crash into the wall, providing extra momentum to take them down. At the right time, a firm tap away from the wall once you hit it, turns you into a bullet.

Big cars are just big cars that can pack a hard punch, but a bit clumsy in most hands. Small cars are just as much as a threat.

I usually drive the P12, the most compact original car in the game. The Indy cars would never be on a road or street with traffic, so they are in another category, but this info is still for them too.  In this case, it is all about how the driver knows the limits of their car and thyself. Weak points are crucial and focus on those. The right speed enables any car to take out any car.

Go put this into practice and let me know if this has helped any of you.

Happy burning!