Tips for Winter Driving

My dad grew up in Wyoming.  His first winter in Utah he stood outside and watched, mesmerized, as the snow fell to the ground.

"Never seen snow?" an acquaintance conjectured.

"I'm from Wyoming," my dad admitted.  "I've seen a lot of snow.  I've just never seen it fall down to the ground.  In Wyoming, it usually blows sideways."

Dad had a lot of experience with snow driving along with a few other bits of expertise.  (Dad had us all practice driving as if we suddenly had come on a cow in the road.  His tip?  Let up on the brake at the last second and hit the thing square on.  Evidently, if you do, you're less likely to flip the cow up on your hood.)  One of dad's most important tips for stopping in the snow: pumping your brakes.

Pumping your brakes is one of the most counterintuitive things to do when you're rapidly sliding toward something, in part because it requires you to take your foot off the brake over and over.  'Course, we kids all learned to drive in cars with "standard" brakes, something that's hardly standard any more.

Virtually every car made in the last 20 years (I totally made this statistic up) has anti-lock brakes (ABS), and the bonus is, with ABS you don't need to pump the brakes--they pulse for you.  Probably one of the hardest things for me to learn to do in adulthood was to stop pumping my brakes in the snow and just trust the car.

The other day, as I slid around in the snow with my brakes pulsing, I realized that now might be a good time to offer up some tips on winter driving.

Photo courtesy: Honda Ridgeline Facebook page

1. Know your brakes.  If you drive an older car with standard brakes, follow my dad's tip and pump the brakes.  If you have ABS, a smooth slow braking job will do the trick.  Don't let the pulsing throw you.  Just keep the pressure on.

2. Keep your distance.  When driving in the snow, you need to keep up to three times the distance that you normally would from a car in front of you.

3.  Slow down.  In any kind of inclement weather, it's important to slow down.  Snow can reduce visibility as well as stopping speed.  Even if you slide into something, if you're traveling slowly it's far likely to be disastrous.

4. Don't stop.  It can be hard to get the car going on slick, slushy roads.  If you can just maintain your slow speed and avoid stopping, that's idea.  When you have to stop, say, to turn across traffic, give yourself lots of extra space as you'll be slower getting going than you thought.

5. Turn into a skid.  The best advice I've seen on this is from an MSNBC travel article.  They said, "If you start to skid, steer the vehicle gently in direction you want your vehicle to go and don't touch the brakes."