Driving Safely and Winter Conditions


Winter is in full swing along with agonizing winter traffic conditions. When ice and snow begin to fall, we change our whole daily routine to accommodate it including spending that extra time to warm up our cars, thus lengthening our daily commute and shortening the time we have to ourselves. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part of course is the actual traffic where the once predictable drivers can turn erratic at the drop of a hat, by no fault of their own.

This is thanks to the force of mother nature and regardless of whether an auto collision is caused by the slipping of ice or snow, you’ll still be held liable as the courts are counting on you to regain control of your car (or the best control that you can) and continue the ongoing effort to make the roads safe for everyone. And while it would be nice if we could all just stay home, not everyone is so lucky and will have to go out eventually, so for when that time comes, here are basic driving tips for winter conditions:

Prepare for the worst: We never want the worst to happen, but an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Should the untimely event occur that your car ceases to function. Its good to have a small cache of winter essential tucked away in your car. This includes a set of warm clothing, food, a flashlight, water, a glass scraper, and small extra tank of gas. These items will help sustain you until help comes along if not allow you to help yourself.

Drive slowly: as a rule of thumb, you’re going to be driving a bit slower than you would in fairer weather. You’ll want to apply the gas slowly to prevent skidding, and decelerate slower as well. This also means putting more distance between you and the person in front of you so you have that buffer of space. That said, you’ll want to decelerate early too.

Never power up hills: As opposed to hitting the gas when you go up a hill, try to get some inertia going and then let it carry you up. If you start skidding, you’ll lose control of your vehicle and start sliding backwards into an accident.

Try to avoid complete stops until you reach your destination: It takes a significant deal of effort to get moving in icy conditions from a complete stop. So if it can be helped, try and reduce your speed to a roll when approaching a traffic light and return to normal speed once it changes again to help save you some trouble.  If you have a personal injury case contact a personal injury lawyer like the office of B Cunningham Law.