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Sadly we are coming to the end of what wasn’t a bad summer other than August that was complete rubbish! Nights are drawing in and whilst we are still enjoying some late sunshine we should be making plans for the winter months ahead.

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Fleet News has provided a few pointers and given us a few things to think about. Inevitably there will be a few days when it will be difficult, if not impossible, to either drive to work or use public transport (bit of wind, snow, leaves on the train line, volcanoes erupting, landslides etc.) so do you have a back up plan that enables you and/or staff to work from home in the case of an emergency?

Don’t forget if you employ staff you are responsible for their health and safety and could leave yourself exposed if you insist they come to work when the authorities or experts have advised against it. With regard to your car, have you considered swapping to winter tyres to reduce tyre wear and increase grip. Many of the national tyre fitters now offer a service whereby they will swap over tyres for you between summer and winter and store your summer tyres till spring.

Fleet News also suggest that you consider 4WD cars but I disagree. I don’t recall one day last winter when a 4WD car would have avoided taking any time off work and I have to say that unless you have taken a 4WD course the chances are that you will be no better off driving a 4WD car than a 2WD car. Oh and a little tip if you are stuck in snow, try letting a little air out of the drive tyres to increase grip or better still buy a set of snow chains and a spade to dig yourself out.

Make sure that your car has been serviced and there is enough anti freeze in your radiator and plenty in your windscreen wash. In fact make up some anti-freeze screen wash and keep it in a bottle in the boot, it is so easy to run out of screen wash on a trip and end up not being able to see out of the windscreen. Give yourself a few minutes to sit in the car with the engine running in order to warm up the heater.

If it is cold or raining and you drive straight off you will find the windscreen heavily misting up before it starts to demist making it impossible to see where you are going. Remember it is an offence to drive a car if you cannot see through the screen due to either dirt or mist. Oh and another tip, get yourself some Marigold rubber gloves and stick them in the boot.

Snow chain at the front wheel. Photographer: Devchonka. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The best type of gloves to wear when clearing snow or frost off the car or even to wear when fitting snow chains or digging out the snow. They are totally waterproof and surprisingly warm. I’ll add a few more tips into my next newsletter as the countdown to winter continues. There are lots more tips to come so make sure you read them and stay safe! By Graham Hill

I know we seem to be a nation of moaners in this country when it comes to weather conditions but there are few other countries in the world where they have a huge expanse of water on one side and the equivalent to a duck pond the other. Walk north for a few miles and you are stepping onto a glacier but take a few steps in the opposite direction and you’re negotiating sand dunes.

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And it doesn’t stop at ground level, racing around above us, when it feels like it, is the notoriously unpredictable jet stream. Add it all together and we end up with cars, the majority of which still don’t have air conditioning as standard because ‘it’s never that hot for that long’, and heating systems that don’t seem to have changed much since my dad’s Ford Consul.

But when it comes to adapting to weather conditions there is something we need to do, which the Government has the power to change and that is British Summertime. Not because of the inconvenience of re-setting your watch, phone, tablet, computer, laptop, electric toothbrush and all things electric twice every year but it is also dangerous.

Pedestrians have long made the argument against the annual change but statistics regarding car accidents are continue to add weight to the argument that we need to revert to GMT all year round. Typical of us Brits, we invent time by way of Greenwich Mean Time, the standard against which time around the world is measured, then we quite randomly add on the odd hour, then remove it a few months later for reasons that are now lost in the mists of time (I’m sure someone will enlighten me).

But this is all getting serious, as I witnessed myself a couple of days ago. At this time of year, when the skies are clearer and the sun at its most powerful, it reaches eye level during the rush hour. This, according to the AA has led to a quadrupling of head on crashes with lorries, believed to be caused by the long shadows cast by lorries, made even more dangerous when cars are turning.

Glare (Photo credit: theevilmightyf)

As a result the AA has come up with some suggestion to help prevent accidents:

• Always keep the windscreen clear both inside and out. I always keep a glass cleaner spray and kitchen roll in the boot to clean the outside, especially useful towards the end of the summer when bugs splatter themselves on your windscreen.
• If blinded slow down immediately. It is tempting to carry on regardless to let the glare pass but by then it may be too late.
• If driving at sunset, anticipate the effects of glare on you and other drivers. Drivers heading west or through terrain where the sun may appear suddenly need to expect to travel more slowly than usual.

I really do think we should be taking another look at the need to adjust our time twice every year. By Graham Hill

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Another consequence of the bad winter last winter has been the resulting shortage of windscreens. It is normally as a result of gritting that the windscreen replacement companies become very busy but this year it has been the poor conditions of our roads that has led to windscreen replacement companies, such as Auto Windscreens, running out of screens. In the past a stone hitting the glass has caused a chip Read more »

Warnings about stone chips have been issued as we move into winter. With local authorities operating on reduced budgets more roads will remain unrepaired as frost causes pot holes to appear. So when the roads start to get gritted, causing the usual stone chips on windscreens, drivers have been warned to have the chip repaired rather than run the risk of hitting a pot hole which can often result in an instant crack. Don’t forget Read more »