In bad weather

Severe weather can greatly impact your ability to control your vehicle, affect your braking distance and present new hazards that increase your risk of collisions. On this page we’ll cover how you can prepare for driving in wind, rain and wintery conditions to help you prevent a collision.

Driving in severe weather

Heavy rain, high winds, flooding, ice and wintery showers can cause massive disruption to roads and create many potential dangers to drivers.

Rain and flooding

Heavy rain can make visibility very poor and therefore affect your stopping distance, whilst flooding on roadways can also cause you to aquaplane (meaning you skid and lose control).

Torrential rain can overwhelm roads in a matter of hours and cause large flash floods. Driving through these is not only bad for your car, but could also put you in real danger.

Snow, ice and wintery weather

Driving through snow and ice can be extremely dangerous, with limited visibility and skid risk. It’s important to take note of the weather forecast and where possible, limit your driving in wintery conditions. If bad weather is due, do the weekly shop early so you don’t find yourself needing supplies and being forced to drive when the weather comes in. If you can, work from home, many employers now allow this.

If you have to drive there are a few things you can do to reduce the risk of incident:

Driving in snow and ice:

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