Winter Driving – Simple Tips to Keep Safe
Last winter the heavy snow and bad weather brought chaos to our roads, this blog post provides driving tips and advice on tyres and kit that is essential for safe winter driving.
Tyres
A practice that is common in Europe but not so common here in the UK is having two sets of tyres, a winter set and a summer set. Although many people might feel that our winters are not bad enough to need a set of special tyres that isn’t the case. Tyre compounds are influenced by temperature so is it reasonable to expect a tyre that was made to cope with summer temperatures that might be (after a long run) over 30 degrees to be able to cope just as well with temperatures of -8 degrees (which is what it was in our area of North Wales last night) or even colder? In fact modern summer tyres will start to lose their grip at temperatures of about 7 degrees and in the UK average temperatures are less than this quite often between October and March.
Having looked into this it seems that a winter tyre can decrease stopping distance by about 11 metres when travelling at 20 mph – that’s more than the distance of a car and could be the difference between hitting something (or God forbid, someone) and not doing so.
Obviously cost is a factor here as you will need the initial outlay of a new set of tyres and wheels and then you will have to find somewhere to store the set that you are not using – this can either be in your garage (store them on their side) or some tyre fitters like Kwik-Fit offer what they call a “tyre hotel” where they will store it for you. Having said that, a set of winter tyres is likely to last you about 3 years.
Tyre Chains and Socks
I’ve often read about chain tyres and last year was reading about tyre socks but last night I was watching a program on television that showed a set of socks being used by a recovery driver to rescue someone that had got stuck on ice and compacted snow. All you need to do if you are stuck on this type of road surface is to slip the sock over the tyre and then drive, slowly and carefully, until you are on a better surface.
Other equipment and kit
It goes without saying that you need think about some extra kit in the vehicle if you are driving in bad weather. This typically includes a blanket (I have a couple of space blankets in the car and routinely put a fleece in the car at the start of winter), a hat, gloves, spare coat if you have the space and even a snow shovel (you can pick up folding ones online or in some high street stores). If you are on a long journey it is also worth having a flask of coffee or tea and a fully charged mobile phone. I also put a couple of bits of old carpet in the boot just in case I either get stuck or need some extra grip and don’t go anywhere in the car without a tow rope. This may sound like a lot of extra kit to carry around but I find that it all the bigger items fit into a plastic box in the boot (the space blankets live in the glove box).
Preparation
There are several things that you should do before the onset of bad weather to make sure your vehicle is ready for winter. These include making sure your antifreeze is topped up, your windscreen wipers are replaced (I read somewhere that the average wiper covers an acre of glass in the course of the year) so replacing them at the start of winter seems a good idea). Also take a look at your battery – is it likely to fail you in the middle of winter when there is an extra load on it? If it’s more than a few years old take it to your local garage and ask them to test it for you. Many of these would be covered in a service if you are due one, and some garages will even carry out a mini winter service for you.
Before you set off, make sure that your windscreen washers have been topped up with winter screen wash at the recommended concentration.
Never drive with snow covering the windows (I’m sure you have all seen cars and vans driving down the road with the driver peering out of a small gap in the snow) and clear your bonnet, roof and boot of snow – the bonnet snow could blow back onto your windscreen, the roof snow could slide down and cover your windscreen or blow back onto someone behind you as could the boot snow. While this may sound funny, imagine how you would feel if a motorcyclist was in an accident after being covered by snow blown back from your vehicle.
Driving Techniques
The first thing to remember is that no end of 4 wheel drive, special tyres, chains or socks will keep you out of trouble if you drive without taking care and ignore the fact that winter driving needs different driving techniques.
The simple thing to do is to always take it slowly and gently, don’t make any sudden movements with the steering wheel and be delicate on the pedals – both accelerator and brakes should be treated as if they have eggs balanced on them that you don’t want to crack.
You may find it easiest to start off in 2nd gear if you have a manual box and keep in a high gear if you can to reduce the risk of wheel spin – you don’t want wheel-spin to start as this means that you have broken the grip with the road surface which is exactly what you don’t want to happen.
You need to concentrate as well and look well ahead to judge what the other traffic is doing so that you can react, leave plenty of space between you and the vehicle in front (more so than normal) as you will take longer to stop.
Remember, it will take longer to get anywhere if you are travelling in snow and ice, you will have to concentrate a lot more, even when travelling on local roles. Take it easy, stay calm, be prepared and you should get to where you want to be safely and if the worst happens and you are stuck at least you will be able to call for help and keep warm while you are waiting.
The Good Life – Working in Conwy
Earlier on in the week I attended the launch of a new website that has been created to promote e-businesses and businesses with websites in the Conwy area. The econwyrural website was set up to promote the diversity of businesses in the area and the advantages of living and working in the Conwy area.
It was interesting to see the mix of businesses that have initially been chosen to appear on the site – these include photographers, a craft shop in Llanrwst , adventure holidays, jewellery makers and even a supplier of glass eyes. The common factors in all of these businesses is their use of the internet to promote themselves and the love that they have for the area. Living in the area I know just what the econwy rural site means when it talks about inspirational views and quality of life in the area – for example I got up this morning and drove down the road a few hundred yards and came across this scene overlooking the Conwy Valley into Snowdonia. This kind of view makes you realise that there is a lot more to life than living in a city.
View of the Conwy Valley with Snowdonia in the background
There are, of course problems with living and working in a rural area, the cost of fuel, the distances you can sometimes have to drive to get anywhere (our local big supermarket is a 30 mile round trip for example) and broadband speed. Having said that distances and costs can be minimised with careful planning and BT are working on speeding up broadband connections – in Llanrwst, where I am based they recently upgraded the local exchange and I am now getting a very respectable 20Mb down and 0.74Mb up (as measured by speedtest.net – a typical result can be seen here http://www.speedtest.net/result/1736098070.png ). Is is much better than I was getting in Peterborough where I used to live.
So, if you have a business idea, want to leave the rat race and start up a business or even if you have an existing business and are looking to relocate somewhere cleaner where the air is purer and the views are great why not come and take a look at the Conwy area?
What is SEO?
This is a question that many website owners will probably answer with “that’s easy – it stands for Search Engine Optimisation”. But I need you to think a little deeper than that.
When you say search engine optimisation just what exactly do you mean? Again, the answer is probably ”getting to the top of the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo”. I would agree that that is normally the aim of any SEO professional but would like to ask you one further question.
What do you want to get to the top of the search engines for? It is all very well saying that you want to be at the top of the search results but I truly believe that the mark of a good and successful SEO campaign is not measured by positions, or even by traffic (visitors to the site) but can be measured by clients or sales. If you stop for a moment and think the idea of most SEO should be to get visitors to your site that are looking for the service or product that you provide – many of these are unlikely to have ever heard of you so will not be searching for you by name. Once they are on the site it is the job of the page content to convince the visitor to contact you / sign up for a newsletter / buy your products or what ever it is your site is “selling”. A good seo person should see the whole thing in its entirety and not just as a technical exercise in getting top results.
Imagine that you are a hotel in North Wales for example, you would surely be looking for visitors that are looking for a hotel to stay at in the area you are based in – there is very little point in being at the top of the results for “hotels”, “UK Hotels” or even “hotels in Wales” – you are based in North Wales after all. The same would apply (although maybe less so) if you are providing professional services such as accountancy or legal advice or if you are a firm providing cleaning services – many people prefer to look for these kinds of services in their immediate location.
You can even apply this rule to many online stores, for example if you sell craft materials such as Fimo polymer clay then you want to be found for the products you sell and not just “craft materials” – all you would end up doing if you ranked highly for this phrase for example is get visitors looking for items such as jewellery findings, wool, foam shapes, pens and pencils, card making supplies and so on. Each of these visitors would then leave your site without buying anything from you if all you sell is polymer clay (and yes, there are specialist online stores like that out there in the great World Wide Web).
So don’t be surprised if you talk to an SEO professional who first asks what you want to be found for, then suggests that some of the phrases you are aiming at are wrong and finally makes suggestions about making changes to your site – after all, if they want to do a good job for you it may well be that they are going to suggest changes to make the visitor experience much smoother, meaning that you may actually make some sales or sign up clients from your site. As an SEO professional myself I can happily point to clients who have done this (one for example has signed up 20 new clients in the past year as a result of the SEO and their website – and to me this is the mark of a successful campaign). I would be interested in seeing what you think makes a successful SEO campaign, you can comment on this below 
To read more of our SEO tips please click on the category link on the right of this article.
