How to Drive When it’s Raining or Snowing Outside

I live in Arizona,  in the great Southwest of the United States. If there is one thing that most drivers of southwestern states seem to have in common, it must be a marked ignorance of how to operate a car safely in either rainy or snowy conditions. If you live in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, or other states in this part of the country, you likely know what I’m talking about: cars driving into flooded washes, and being swept away or being flooded themselves, requiring expensive rescues from Law enforcement or fire departments. Vehicles in ditches on the side of the road due to sliding off the road because they either braked too late or turned too hard on a wet or icy road. Or the numerous fender-benders that are visible on streets or freeways anytime the weather turns bad. The reason there are so many accidents in these conditions, and how to avoid them, is the subject of today’s article.

First off, let’s tackle why the accidents occur. They occur because of one fundamental reason: people do not change how they drive when the weather turns bad. If you take a look at the way most people drive when it’s sunny and bright, and compare it to when they drive when it’s rainy or snowy, you will notice one glaring difference: the fact that there is no difference, usually! Most people accelerate, brake, and turn when it’s raining or snowing just the same as they would if the sun was shining and the road was dry. This is the major factor that contributes to accidents and getting stuck when the weather turns bad. The reason people don’t change how they drive in bad weather, in my opinion, is that people do not respect the weather.  Look at our cars now, they are virtually accident proof, they can park themselves, and they have lane departure warnings and automatic braking. A person could be forgiven for believing that they really don’t have to focus anymore when it comes to driving. It is as if those scenes from the Will Smith movie, I Robot, have almost come to pass. If you’ve never seen that movie, it is about a future time where robots serve humanity in great quantities, and how they go wrong. Why that is pertinent here is that the cars in this world drive themselves. People get in their cars, tell the car where to go, and then kick back, eat, sleep, read the paper, or do anything except drive. While that’s the future in this movie, that future is not too far away, with companies such as Google and Uber working on autonomous (self-driving) cars.

But why is the fact that we are coming closer and closer to autonomous cars an issue? Simply because when we no longer feel we need to focus on the roads or driving as much as we used to, we lose respect, and fear, for the road and what we drive in. This happens when it is sunny, and it happens when the weather is bad. Drivers don’t worry about having to focus on the need to increase their braking distance during the rain and snow, because they have Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS) and autonomous braking, so the car will do the work for them. They don’t have to worry about accidents, because the car they drive was a top safety pick from the IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). In short, drivers seem to feel today that the focus that should be given to the road, which needs to be heightened during bad weather, is not necessary. The wrecks and the flooded cars that litter the landscape during a storm state differently, however.

OK, so the cause of this situation is a lack of respect for bad weather, and an overconfidence in what the car can do. So what is the cure? The cure consists of three parts: 1. Slow Down 2. Treat every acceleration, turn, and braking event as if it were happening in an ice rink. 3. Respect the power of the weather and the fact that the road has much less traction than it does when it’s sunny out. Let’s take these one at a time.

Slow down. This is the major cause of most accidents by far. My standard rule of thumb is to drop my speed anywhere from five to ten miles per hour anytime the weather gets bad. If visibility drops to a bad level, I reduce speed more, or I don’t drive.  The reason this helps is because bad weather takes away not only visibility, but traction. The road surface you drive on when the weather is bad has much less traction than it does when it is dry out, due to water, snow, or ice being on the road surface, and those elements lessening the traction tires get from the road. As a result, slowing down allows your car to grip the road better, and it allows you to have more reaction time to deal with unexpected events. And as I said already, there will be people spinning out, going in to ditches, or going through red lights and Stop signs because they aren’t changing how they drive. By slowing down, you give yourself more time to react to sudden emergencies, and you give your car more room to stop or get out of the way if you need to react to another driver’s mistake. Just make sure that as you slow down, you don’t forget about your rear view mirror. Remember, the other drivers aren’t going to slow down, so you could have a situation coming up behind you due to a bad driver. Keep your focus both forward and backwards, and get off the road if you need to due to bad weather, or a bad driver behind you.

Every acceleration in rainy or snowy conditions needs to be treated as if you are driving on ice. This means that whenever you push the gas pedal down, press the brake pedal, or turn the steering wheel, you must do it very smoothly. No jerky motions. No sudden starts or stops. Remember, your tires are not as firmly in contact with the road when it’s raining or snowing because there is either water on the road, or snow, or both depending on what’s going on. If you’ve ever gone ice skating, you’ve likely seen someone fall down and slide on the ice for awhile. The same thing will happen to your car if you do not appreciate the lowered traction available to your car in these conditions. Making sure that accelerating, braking, and turning are all down as if you were on ice will make sure that you are able to operate the car with as much control as possible because you won’t be causing your car to lose traction by being too aggressive. It also helps you by making you have the mindset that, at any time, your car could lose traction and slide. This will be invaluable in case you do hit a patch of ice or a puddle that makes you slide. Since you are already in the mindset that it could happen, you will be able to take corrective action with the car, and not be caught off guard like most people are who don’t modify their driving practices in bad weather.

Rain, snow, fog, any sort of inclement weather has killed thousands of drivers throughout the years. Yet none of that is the weather’s fault. People die in inclement weather because they don’t respect it. People tend to drive in snow as if there is no possibility of ice being on the road. People drive in the rain as if the possibility of hitting a big puddle or a wash and damaging the engine can’t happen. People drive in the fog not thinking of the fact that maybe the fog will make it hard to see lane lines and that at any time, another driver, or they themselves, could stray in to another lane because the fog is too thick to allow the driver to see the road clearly.  Drivers who do not see these possibilities do not see them because they don’t appreciate the weather. If you need proof of the danger of the weather, ask any sailor or commercial fisherman. In fact in Gloucester, Massachusetts, one of America’s first ports, there is a plaque and a statue in the town which memorializes all those sailors from Gloucester who have died at sea since the 1600s. The number of men who have died, according to the plaque, is over 5,300, almost all of them due to weather in some way, shape, or form.  That should be testimony enough to the need to respect nature, and not take its dangers for granted. Until next time….