Merityre Article Archive

We all know how a car can be prepared for use in inclement weather conditions. Car tyres can be checked, maintained, enhanced or replaced , as appropriate. Much the same goes for consumables including bulbs, screen wash, windscreen wipers and so on.  However, even the best prepared vehicle can come unstuck through poor driving.  Here are some salient points about driving in dreadful conditions…

Rain

Rain and sleet can rob you of vision and make off with much of your car tyres’ grip. You can counter this in two ways. As regards vision, the tactic is simple – drive only as fast as conditions permit. If it’s teeming down and spray is lashing against your windscreen, just slow down.

As regards the degree of grip lost to rain by your car tyres, the solution is once again perfectly simple. Your stopping distance will increase on wet roads. So, you need to leave more space between your car and the car/van/lorry in front.

Unless standing water is rife, the amount of grip your car tyres have for cornering should be adequate. Slow down if you encounter standing water. At best it’ll tug your steering about; at worst your tyres will aquaplane. Riding on the surface of the water equals no grip.

Fog

Fog has no effect on the amount of grip your car tyres give but it has a marked effect on how far you can see. ‘Drive as fast as you can see, and no faster’ is sound advice but there are tricks that sort out the safe drivers from the statistics.

Fog can be unpredictable to say the least. Remember that just because you can see half a mile ahead in mist doesn’t mean that visibility can’t plummet in a sudden, thicker fog bank. If you find yourself hurtling towards the unforgiving tail of a lorry at terminal velocity, the best car tyres in the world won’t help. You’re driving far too fast for the conditions.

Don’t be caught out on the motorway, as once again, impeccable tyres won’t help. Big lorries punch a nice big holes in thick fog. You find this out when you pull out of a lorry’s slipstream to overtake. In what might appear to be a clear lane, you could be in deep trouble in a second. Use your windscreen wipers and washers regularly – fog is water vapour; it and grime build up surprisingly quickly. And use your fog lights, especially those at the rear.

Snow and Ice

‘Softly, softly catchee monkey’ is an old proverb, which happens to fit the best approach to driving on snow and ice. Getting the best from your car tyres on snow and ice demands patience and finesse, not to mention a lot of forethought.

Of course, we have helping hands nowadays. ABS means that even though you can skid through steering, you can also brake while skidding. Under less extreme circumstances, you might find you car’s behaviour hasn’t a great deal to do with your inputs at the steering wheel and pedals. Once again, it’s a matter of going too fast for the conditions.

What to do when your tyres’ grip is compromised? It’s wise to do nothing with the brakes and throttle. Use your steering instead. Say your car is ploughing straight on. It’s understeering and you can stop this by straightening the wheel until the grip comes back. Should the car’s tail end go wandering off, you’re in oversteer. Turn the steering in the direction the tail is heading. You’ll save it then but you may have to counter-steer in the opposite direction.

In bad conditions, ‘caution’ is your watchword. Grip and/or visibility will be compromised to some extent by bad weather. Should the visibility and grip be terrible, put your feet up by the fire. Then you will live to drive another day.

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Here are a few sobering figures. When you’re driving, the grip of your car tyres ultimately determines how quickly it can stop. At 30mph, the tonne or more of moving metal you’re piloting is travelling at 45 feet per second; every second equals 2.8 car lengths. At 70mph, every second’s travel is 105 feet. In ideal conditions, a car travelling at 30 mph takes 75 feet to stop; at 70mph, it’s 105 feet. In wet conditions, the 30mph stopping distance jumps to 120 feet and at 70mph, it’s a whopping 560 feet – that’s 35 car lengths. The strategies for coping when driving in poor conditions aren’t all obvious but the need for them will become so. Read on and learn.

It’s clear that when driving in rain, we need to leave more stopping space, to give your car tyres room to work with their reduced grip. Reducing your speed is a good idea too.

Car tyres have more to deal with than just surface water. If it rains after a long dry spell, the road surfaces’ build up of dirt and diesel, plus water, makes for near skid-pan conditions. Moreover, it isn’t just car tyres that are affected by rain. It’s a fact that vision is compromised on many levels by rain. First, a rain-sodden windscreen isn’t the same as a dry one, regardless of how efficient windscreen wipers have become. Furthermore, any car has areas of unwiped glass. Second, clammier conditions lead to misting up. This can be cleared by demisters and heated windows, but this is rarely instant and it obviously affects vision. Third, heavy rain and the resultant spray compromises vision yet more. Fourth and last, pedestrians tend to shy away from the rain and are unlikely to keep as sharp a lookout as they might.

Apart from attending to the elements of speed, distance and grip, you need to take further care in wet weather. A flood, for example, can cause major problems. Drive into one too fast and your engine could inhale a measure of water. This could do anything from causing it to stop to doing irreparable damage. What’s more, even if you negotiate a flood successfully, you’ll have wet brakes. Apply your brakes lightly until you feel them start to work properly or they won’t be there when you need them. Also, remember that anti-lock brakes let you steer when skidding but won’t necessarily reduce stopping distance as much as you might think. In fact, a June 1999 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study found that ABS increased stopping distances on loose gravel by an average of 22 percent.

What about the still worse conditions of ice and snow, and fog. The former requires gentle, intelligent control inputs – you’ll soon find out how gentle you must be. Fog driving is all about vision. Some clearly feel they have magic tyres but the bottom line is if you can’t see or are following too close, you can’t stop in time, period. Remember to use your wipers when the fog droplets build up on your windscreen.

Lastly, it may seem odd to include ideal conditions, i.e. sunny, dry and bright, under defensive driving. If it does, try this. Picture yourself driving west, late in the day. The level sun is in your eyes, your windscreen’s grimy and your view of the road isn’t at all clear. This would be a good time to stop and clean your screen.

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