A good habit to get into is make sure you use reverse often and make sure you are using the hotkey to reverse your vehicles, this should help improve their survivability.
This hotkey usage is important
If u have extra buttons on your (gaming) mouse, u can make a macro script including a click+ pressing reverse key, to make it easier. As a classical Key user, 'U' is a bit far away on the keyboard. so having a script on my mouse is helpful.