No matter who you are or what you drive, driving during the winter is always going to be a stressful, dangerous, experience once that snow or ice hits ground. It is the season with the most non-fatal and fatal auto-accidents. This year keep yourself as far out of harm’s way as possible by practicing some winter driving tips.

1. Keep your energy high. Driving in slow moving, snowy conditions, will make you fatigued to begin with, so it is very important that you don’t get behind the wheel when you’re already tired. Make sure you don’t bundle yourself up too tight in clothes, or have the heat on past the point of comfort.
2. Keep your tires inflated. Having reliable tires is one of the most important things when it comes to driving on snowy or icy roads. Make sure to check to see if you need new tires entirely because you will never need them more than this season. If you don’t, then you should regularly check to see if they’ve deflated at all.
3. Do not use cruise control. Using cruise control when driving on icy or snowy roads can be very dangerous. Your cruise control cannot account for the dangers of sudden stops on these roads, and it takes your concentration away from your own car and from the other cars.
4. Focus on other cars. It is never more important to drive defensively than during the winter. Cars may be driving too slow, or too fast so they can get out of the dangerous scene. Also, many accidents during these times are chain accidents, so be aware of getting too close to a pack of cars.
5. Accelerate and decelerate slowly. It is all about gaining traction with icy or snowy roads. The best way to do this is to slowly accelerate, and build up to your normal speed. Losing traction by accelerating too fast is what causes more than half of these winter auto accidents.
6. Be careful when going up hills. Going up hills is one of the most dangerous parts of driving during the winter. The first tip is to never power up the hill. It is very likely that you will lose traction, and descend down the hill if you try applying the gas to heavily and powering up the hill. Moreover, you should never lower the gas when going up a hill. By steadily going up a hill, and then slowing down, you are losing even more traction.

If you have any questions about Winter Driving Tips or if you are looking for an asphalt contractor in the Baltimore, Maryland area, please contact PTG Enterprises aka My Pavement Guy today by calling 410-636-8777, or click here today! You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Tags: maryland, Winter Driving Tips

This entry was posted on Monday, December 30th, 2013 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Highway Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.