Driving safety tips for sleet, snow, ice

Driving safety tips for sleet, snow and ice are simple: don’t drive in bad weather if you can avoid it.  If you absolutely must drive, go slower than usual and steer, accelerate and brake more gently than usual to avoid skids.

Sleet, snow and ice make walking difficult in NYC and driving outright dangerous even for good drivers in vehicles with anti-lock brakes, traction control and all-season tires.

The most dangerous winter driving condition is “black ice”, when asphalt freezes with a thin coat of ice a driver can’t see, and the car goes out of control. Please stay off the roads and streets and give priority to snowplows, salting trucks, and emergency response vehicles including ambulances and fire trucks.  Abandoned cars blocking the streets were a big reason it took so long to recover from that memorable Christmas 2013 snowstorm.

If you absolutely must drive, remember these safety tips for driving in sleet, snow and ice:

• Accelerate and brake gently.  Spinning your wheels just makes things worse — worse for you and also worse for the next driver that hits the super slippery patch you left behind.
• Leave extra distance between your car and the one in front of you, because you’ll need extra distance to stop when necessary.
• If you start to skid, look at where you want to go and steer to get there.  Steer gently, because quick and jerky steering can make the skid even worse.
• Make sure the windshield reservoir is full, since you’ll be using a lot to keep the windshield clear of road salt and grime.
• Don’t depend on all the high-tech safety systems in your vehicle.  ABS and traction control are there to help, but they cannot take the place of good, sensible driving.
• And remember, even if you keep control of your vehicle, not everybody else will.

Here are more tips from a source I trust, Edmunds.com.

Read my article on how to winterize your car on Living on the Cheap.

Find more car and travel articles by NYCOTC’S Evelyn Kanter on ecoXplorer