Where should you put your hands on the steering wheel when driving a car?

Back in 1966 when I learned to drive I was told to put my hands at the ten o’clock and two o’clock positions. That advice now is out-of-date, since airbags became mandatory in 1989. This week I stumbled over an article at Lifehacker titled How you hold the steering wheel could seriously injure you in a crash. It instead said to put them at the nine o’clock and three o’clock positions to avoid getting hit by an airbag activating during a crash.

I Googled and found the Snopes article titled Should you put your hands at the 10 and 2 o’clock positions on the steering wheel? It said the ten and two was old advice from before airbags. Advice about turning the wheel hand over hand also was obsolete, since it applied to cars without power steering. I learned hand over hand in my dad’s 1964 Chevelle, which had manual steering.

Smoking a pipe with a straight stem while driving is potentially fatal. Just imagine having its bowl nailed by an airbag.

What other advice you once got is now out-of-date?

Images of a steering wheel, clock, and pipe smoker were adapted from Openclipart.