Roadside Survival, Part Dos – Safe Spots for Your Car

Summer means a lot of y’all will probably be picking up summer jobs, traveling with family, road trips with friends and just out and about more. With an increase in the amount of driving you might do, we here at Teens in the Driver Seat thought it would be a great idea to do a short series of blogs about vehicle breakdowns and low tech solutions to roadside survival.

Finding a safe spot for your car

What do you do if you get a flat tire or your engine dies out while on the road? According to the book by Walt Brinker, titled Roadside Survival – Low Tech Solutions to Automobile Breakdowns, in case of an emergency always pull over to a safe area.

If you have a flat tire:

• Turn on your warning flashers.
• Keep driving on the rim until you can get to a safe spot.
• Most highways don’t have a shoulder for you to pull over in. In this case, just keep driving on the rim until you can get out of traffic. “This will probably destroy your tire, and it may damage the rim, but your safety trumps a rim and tire.”

If your engine dies out:

• Turn on your warning flashers.
• Try to steer your vehicle to safety before the vehicle stops rolling.
• If you cannot get to safety and your vehicle is blocking a lane, the driver might be better off getting out of the vehicle in case it should get hit by another car.
• Call a tow truck to pull the vehicle to safety or a repair shop.

Using reflective devices:

• Depending on traffic and poor visibility, turn on your warning flashers, wear your reflective jacket and deploy three reflective warning triangles behind your vehicle. Click here for a full list of emergency items you should have in your car.
• Placing these warning triangles accentuates the emergency and direction to stay clear.

Correct reflective warning triangle placement
	One-way or divided highway:“Behind the disabled vehicle’s left rear corner within 10 ft, and behind the vehicle 100 ft, and 200ft in the center of vehicle’s lane.”
	Two-way highway or undivided highway:Behind the disabled vehicle’s left rear corner within 10 ft, and behind the vehicle 100 ft in the center of the vehicle’s lane; also, 100 ft in front of the vehicle in the center of the vehicle lane.

• Retrieving these triangles should be the last thing you do before you depart. In poor visibility or at night, have someone face oncoming traffic from behind the disabled vehicle with a flash light and wave traffic away from the shoulder towards the highway.

Stay tuned for our next post: Tire related issues

Reference:

Brinker, W. (2014). Roadside survival: Low-tech solutions to automobile breakdowns. United States: Lighting Source Publishing Platform. www.roadsidesurvival.com