January 7, 2009 E-MAIL PRINT

Be prepared before hitting the road

by Tony Chamberlain/

It is vitally important that someone knows where you are, when you expect to arrive and the routes (and alternate routes) you will be driving. (photo: Marty Basch)

It is vitally important that someone knows where you are, when you expect to arrive and the routes (and alternate routes) you will be driving. (photo: Marty Basch)

As a sailor of some five decades, it occurred to me one day a couple of years ago that since I was a kid getting instruction, I had never practiced any self-rescuing or man-overboard drills.

The latter is as easy to do as throw a cushion off your boat and see if you can maneuver back to get it, a sometimes trickier maneuver than it might seem at first. But the reason most sailors don’t practice such drills is the same reason so many winter motorists get in trouble from lack of preparation.

We become so secure in our familiar surroundings — boat, car, house — that we just assume things will always be predictable, let alone survivable.

Scenario: You are driving with your wife and 8-year-old child when your car becomes disabled on the Kancamagus Highway. It is a late winter afternoon, light fading, and you find yourself in space, somewhere between Lincoln and Conway.

Do you: Leave the car and take your family? Leave them in the car and try to go for help by yourself. Wait for another vehicle to flag down? Hope the state police or some maintenance vehicle happen along?

Whatever you do decide, it would probably be better if you had thought things through well before the emergency happened, and factored in the real possibility that traveling the mountain country of northern New Hampshire, your cell phone won’t work.

Of course, no amount of precaution will keep us totally out of trouble, but there are a few way of stacking the odds more in our favor.

► Make a travel plan that figures in time extremes. If it takes you 45 minutes getting out of Boston, for instance, that’s 45 minutes you will be short at the end of the afternoon making your final approach to the destination.

► Try to do all or most of your winter travel during the day. Sudden temperature drops create black ice — the most deadly road condition of all. Visibility is reduced, and drivers have slower reactions at night. Also, night is a more likely time to encounter deer and moose on northern roads.

► Keep the tank topped up in winter, and, of course, have frequent inspections of tires, engine vitals and fluids, belts and hoses.

► A minimum of equipment for a winter trip should include plenty of water, extra food, warm blankets, portable radio and flashlights with fresh batteries, ice scraper, kitty litter (best for traction), car de-icer (never use water), road flares and reflecting triangles, shovel and broom.

► When planning the route of your trip, take down phone numbers of local and state police near your route, call for regular weather advisories farther along your route, and have numbers for emergency auto road service and emergency hotels along the route.

► It is vitally important that someone knows where you are, when you expect to arrive and the routes (and alternate routes) you will be driving. Make contact with that person when you do arrive. Every pilot files a flight plan, every boat a float plan. It should be no different with cars, especially in winter.

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