5 Winter Driving Tips to Keep You Safe on the Road

Winter has arrived early this season across the U.S.

Here’s what you can do now to prepare yourself and your vehicle for harsh winter driving.

1. Get enough rest?

It’s important when you’re driving in hot or cold weather that you get enough sleep the night before. It’s estimated that 100,000 crashes each year are attributed to drowsy driving. Drowsy driving also results in 1,550 deaths, 71,000 injuries, and $12.5 billion in damage each year. Unlike a breathalyzer test that could detect the presence of alcohol on someone’s breath, no test exists to determine someones alertness on the road.

2. To warm up, open your garage door

We all like a nice warm car to climb into on those cold winter mornings, but make sure you open the garage door before starting up the car. The carbon monoxide emitted by your vehicle’s tailpipe is odorless, tasteless, and has no color.

Dubbed a “silent killer” the gas can build up inside your garage when the car is running. If exposed to large amounts, it can lead to brain damage or death. Last month, a Connecticut couple was found dead inside a parking garage “most likely…by carbon monoxide poisoning.“

3. Pump up those tires

Properly inflated tires not only improve your gas milage that can also mean you car will have proper breaking distances and wear more evenly. In wintertime, cold temperatures make the air in your tires contract and your tires to lose air pressure.

With properly inflated tires, you’re tires are less likely to overheat and have a blowout on the road. You’ll also enjoy better control of your vehicle and improved braking distance.

4. Keep off cruise control

Insnow or on wet pavement, there’s always the possibility of spinouts or losing control of the car. The only way to regain control of the vehicle is to reduce the amount of power being output by the engine.

If you’re using cruise control and your car runs over a wet or icy patch of road, and you hydroplane or spin out, the cruise control setting will continue to apply the same amount of power to the car to maintain speed. That’s exactly what you don’t want.

5. Look and steer where you want to go

It might sound simple, but look and steer the car where you want it go. This comes in handy in the event you get caught in a slide.

If you get caught in one, release your brakes (they don’t work well on ice or snow, anyway) and then turn you steering wheel in the direction of the way the car is sliding. Then, keep looking in the direction you want to go and turn the wheel that way. If you turn too far you’ve “overcorrected” and that could cause the car to slide in the other direction.

The post is brought to you by Steve’s Auto Repair and Tire of Woodbridge.

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