Winter Driving Tips
In most states driving in the winter can be scary. Slick roads from ice and snow can make a simple commute become scary at best. However, if you know a few simple winter driving tips you can reduce your fears of winter driving.
Prepare Your Car For Winter
The biggest winter driving tip is more about preparing your car than the driving itself. Prepare your car for winter. Make sure your car is in good repair and has good tread on the tires. If you live in a place where snow tires or tire chains are used. Have them installed before you need them. It’s a rough trip to the tire shop in deep snow and slick roads with your summer performance tires on your car.
Make sure you have your winter car kit in your car. There is nothing worse than going out to a snow and ice-covered car, just to find out you haven’t put your ice scraper in your car this winter.
Along with an ice scraper, you’ll also want to make sure you have winter-grade washer fluid in your car. Slushy roads can make your windshield pretty messy, having frozen washer fluid doesn’t help this. Even with the best wiper blades, it’s still hard to clean off a windshield without washer fluid.
Warm-up Your Car
Before you get on the road let your car warm up. You’re going to need your windows cleaned and defrosted to be able to see out of. Giving your car a few minutes to start producing heat will help with this. Lots of people will say don’t warm up your car, it’s bad on your car and all sorts of other reasons why not. This is wrong.
You need your car to be warm enough to keep the windows defrosted, and you to be comfortable. You can’t be safe driving if you’re shivering and looking through a small spot at the bottom of your windshield while driving on icy roads. It’s more dangerous to not let your car warm up then to give it a few minutes to warm up.
Know how your car handles
Every car handles differently on slick roads. Just the size differences between makes and models, make a huge difference. Add into it ABS, Traction control, anti-skid, and all the other safety features built into new vehicles. You need to know and understand how your car handles. On the first snow and ice of the season take your car to an empty parking lot and do some donuts. Practice hard braking, and slightly too fast of turns. Purposely try to make your car lose traction and skid.
Only then will you know if your car beeps at you when it loses traction, or turns off your power steering, or even how much or little you have to do to lose control of your car. Yes, some cars will reduce your power steering when you turn too sharply on slick roads. Some will apply the brakes when you don’t want them to, all sorts of strange things, that can cause you more problems when you start to lose control of your car. Losing control of a car is scary, having your car act in a way you aren’t expecting can make it even worse. The best winter driving tip is to know how your car handles bad roads.
Drive Like Your Grandma
Even though you’ve learned just how well or bad your car handles slicks roads, you should still drive overly cautious. I think the term is drive like you have your grandma in the car and she’s holding a steaming cup of coffee in her lap.
Joking aside, seriously slow down when the roads get snow-covered or slick. Just because you know how your car handles doesn’t mean those around you do. You may have to push your car past its ability if someone else loses control in front of you. Thus it’s best to give yourself and your car all the chances possible by slowing down and being overly cautious.
Following Distance
Following distance is a driving tip that shouldn’t need to be mentioned. However, it does. You need to give lots of extra following distances when the roads are icy or even the potential to be icy. The normal following distance should be around 2 seconds but when it’s icy 3-4 seconds should be your minimum.
Along with a greater following distance, don’t be in a hurry. If someone cuts in front of you don’t get upset just give them more following distance. One mistake by someone in front of you can easily become your problem if you don’t have enough time to react and avoid it.
Avoid coming to a complete stop
A simple winter driving tip is to avoid coming to a complete stop. I realize this sounds easier than it is. There are stoplights, stop signs, and the occasional stuck motorist blocking the road. However, if you plan for stop lights you can slow down long before you have to stop and keep rolling slowly until the light changes. Watching the road far enough ahead of you will allow you do avoid having to stop for blocked roads. While I’m not going to tell anyone to break the law, some people may choose to treat stop signs as a rolling stop.
By avoiding the complete stop you can avoid spinning tires while trying to accelerate. This helps you keep control of your car. Granted newer cars have traction control that prevents you from spinning tires. It can also lead to you being stuck if you can get your car moving forward without some tire spin. This is why a majority of cars with traction control have a way to disable this feature.
Speed and Hills
Not only should you avoid stopping on slick roads you also want to look at hills. On ice, even the slightest incline can become a nightmare very quickly. While you don’t want to drive too fast bringing a little extra speed up a hill will do amazing things to prevent you from getting stuck. Also, you don’t want to try to accelerate up hills. Keep your foot firmly on the gas but don’t add any more. You don’t want to start your wheeling spinning as it’s a good way to end up sliding down a hill very quickly.
Lower Gears
Years ago when it was slick out you’d downshift your manual transmission to help slow you down on slick roads. Not to mention you’d avoid upshifting unless you really needed to. This allowed you to let off you the gas and slow down your vehicle without applying the brakes and sliding all over the place.
When automatic transmissions came out people would put their tranny in low range when driving on ice, as a throwback to manual transmissions. When in lower gears even an automatic transmission will allow for some engine braking.
Nowadays many people have forgotten there is any other gear than Drive in their car. When it is slick out you want to use a lower gear. This gives you, engine braking so you don’t rely on your cars brakes as much. Thus, helping slow you down without the chance of sliding on ice.
Some cars have a snow mode built into the transmission if your vehicle has that use it. This goes along with knowing your vehicle. For those whose cars don’t you can manually shift your transmission into a lower gear when you’re traveling at a safe speed to do so.
If you don’t know the correct speed don’t worry newer cars won’t downshift unless it’s safe to do so. However, some may downshift at a higher speed then what is safe on ice. You don’t want too much engine braking, it can have the same effect as slamming on the brakes hard. So try it a few times in an open parking lot before you do this on a busy street.
Being able to select the gear you want to be in and keeping from shifting to a higher gear can do wonders with how well your car handles on ice. This is a winter driving tip many won’t tell you but you should practice and know-how to manually shift your automatic transmission up and down on bad roads.
Low Beams Only During Snow
Day or night time use your low beams only in snow. During the day having your low beam headlights on will help other people see you during a snowstorm. This makes you safer and easier to see.
During the night the want to turn on your bright headlights to see better will be instinctual, but don’t do it. Just like driving in dense fog, bright headlight will reflect off snow and cause you worse problems seeing what’s ahead then if you left your low beams on.
Keep a full tank of Gas
There are plenty of reasons to keep a full tank of gas in your vehicle during the winter. Most people think it’s in case you get stranded you can keep your car running for heat. This is a good reason, but many times if you are stuck out on the road you shouldn’t be running your car. If snow builds up and blocks your tailpipe, it can put exhaust fumes inside your car. Which is the last thing you want.
The main reason you want a full or mostly full tank of case is for extra traction. 1 gallon of gasoline weighs a little over 6 pounds. With most fuel tanks holding over 10 gallons of gas that’s an extra 60+ LBS of weight in your car. That extra weight adds extra traction in snow and ice. This is, relatively speaking, free weight. You don’t have to add sandbags or take up space in your vehicle. Just keep your tank above 3/4 full and you get all the benefits of the weight.
Conclusion
Most winter driving tips come from common sense ideas. If you’ve ready your car for winter and tested your cars handling on bad roads you’ll have a major leg up on those who haven’t. Add into it the equation letting your car warm up so it’s safe and comfortable, you can handle most of what winter storms bring to driving conditions. While using your low beams only and leaving more following distance you are going to add to your personal safety. Throw in the use of lower gears, a full tank of gas, and avoiding a complete stop and you’ll be as prepared for winter driving as you can be.