[TITLE & MUSIC]
Hi there smart drivers Rick with Smart
Drive Test talking to you today about
how to drive in the snow. We've had a
good dump snowed in Vernon, British Columbia, Canada here. And today is
a great day to take you out and show you
how to drive in the snow. As well, it's
much more slippery today because the
temperatures is around freezing 0°
degrees Celsius or 32° degrees Fahrenheit
and when it's around freezing--take note
of that--because know it's going to be
more slippery than if the temperature is sub-zero. I had a comment from
Rosas, she was having some difficulty
driving at night and in the wintertime
when the roadway was snow-covered and
finding the roadway. And I provided all
the information in that night driving
video is also applicable to driving when
the roads are snow-covered. I'll put a
card up here for you in the corner - have
a look at that card and you can find the
video on night driving. So today we have
compromised traction.
It's going to be slippery - so the two
biggest tools you have in your driving
tool box are speed and space management:
slow down, brake early and keep a bigger
margin of space between you and other
traffic and fixed objects on the roadway.
So under ideal conditions in a car or light
truck the following distance is two seconds. Today
you probably want to follow at three to
five seconds; brake early and make sure
there's nobody tailgating you or coming
up on you really quickly when you start
to slow down because you want to be able
to slow down and not have them rear-end
you. And if they are right up on behind
you, you might want to abort the turn. As well,
when you go off the main roads on to the
minor roads, know that the minor roads
aren't going to be plowed and if you get
into deep snow it's going to suck you in
and it's going to push you around. So
know that you've got to find of a
balance between acceleration--so slowing
down to maintain steering control--
but at one in the same time, you don't want
to slow down so much that you actually
get stuck in the deep snow. We're going
to show you how to run through the deep
snow and how to keep momentum going and
also to not get stuck and lose traction.
As well, make sure your windshield washer
fluid is topped up because when you get
out on the main highways, there's going to
be lots of spray and dirt coming off the
roadway from other vehicles. So those are your main
tools and what we're going to do now is hook up
the cameras here and go for a drive and show
you how to drive in the snow.
Stick around, we'll be right back with
that information.
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Hi there smart drivers, Rick with Smart
Drive Test talking to you today about
winter driving and driving in the snow
when you can't see the road because it's
snow covered. As well, it is slippery here
in Vernon, BC because the temperature is
around 0° degrees Celsius--32° degrees
Fahrenheit--it's around the freezing
point and when it's around the freezing
point, it is much more slippery than when
the temperature is sub-zero because
there's a layer of water on top of the
ice and snow that actually lubricates it
and makes it more slippery. And you can
see there the ABS (Anti-lock braking System) started to kick in and
activate, and actually there's video here
on the channel about ABS brakes - have a
look at that because if you haven't
experienced ABS brakes before and these engage
while you're coming up and slowing
down
you may think that there's something
wrong with the vehicle. Because there's
grinding and crunching and making all
kinds of noise and there's pushback on
the pedal. And actually there isn't
anything wrong with the vehicle - those ABS brake responses are normal. Now you
have to be extremely careful driving in
weather like this because other people
can be unpredictable in the way that
they drive. Now basically we're in town
here and it's pretty simple to find
where the roadway goes here because you
just follow the tracks of the other
vehicles. Now roundabout, you want to be
careful with those and make sure that
other people are doing what they're
supposed to be doing and not tearing
through the roundabout.
Because roundabouts are slippery and slick;
other vehicles have come through there and the
these are braking and sliding and
turning on the snow which actually causes it
to melt a little bit and create more
water which lubricates the snow and ice, thus making it more
slippery. So when you prepare to go out
winter driving make sure that you clean
your vehicle off completely so that
other vehicles can see you and you can
see well and clearly when you're driving.
It's important to be able to observe and to
see other traffic. And as well you want
to reduce your speed you want to
increase your following distance. Those
are two key techniques when you're
learning how to drive in the snow. As
well as braking early and stopping back from where you
want to stop. and ensure that your air
conditioning is on. A lot of these newer
vehicles, the air conditioning has to be
on to draw the moisture out of the cabin
of the vehicle,
otherwise your windows aren't going to
defrost well.
So make sure that your air
conditioning is on - that way it'll help
to draw the moisture out of the air
inside his cabin, particularly the more
passengers you have in the vehicle and
their exhaling inside the cold weather -
there's a lot of moisture in our breath
and the more passengers you have in the
vehicle the more prone the windows are
fogging up. As well, on days like today
make sure that you have your windshield
washer fluid topped up, because when you
get out on the main highway there's
going to be a lot of spray coming off
the roadway and whatnot from other
vehicles and the fact that they salted
the roads
and put down sand and whatnot, it's going
to make your windshield very dirty and
you're going to need a lot of windshield
washer fluid to keep the windshield
clear. And make sure that you have good
windshield wipers on your vehicle. If you
haven't changed your windshield wipers
out for wintertime, today or any
other day that you have a lot of snow
and ice on the road is a good day to do
that. And I'm on the highway here. I'm
going to show you that you need
windshield washer fluid topped up [CHUCKLING]
the highway when the temperature is around
freezing - 32° degrees Fahrenheit or
0° degrees Celsius, because there is a lot
of spray coming off the other vehicles
because they have salted the road....
they salted the road and
there's sand and whatnot on the road which
makes the windshield very muddy.
That's a dangerous intersection back
there. It comes out onto the highway and
when I come out there I turned my four-way
flashers on to indicate to other
traffic that I was coming out there and
I was going slowly. Now I'm just gonna
slow down here. You can see in the
windshield--in the dashcam there--is now
fogging over. And I've got my windshield
wipers on. I'm just getting my speed here, and
setting the vehicle on cruise because
the road is well salted and the
temperature's around freezing. There's not
going to be any ice on the road - it's
well-traveled. When you have these high
volume roadways in the wintertime
they're going to be well traveled. And
actually, now we're getting back into a bit of
snow and slush and I don't want the
cruise control on - I just want to work
the throttle.
So if you get into any kind of situation or
road environment where
it's questionable
condition of the road, then you
don't want to use cruise control. And
this truck is coming over in front of me
here and he's got a lot of spray, so I'm
going to turn my windshield wipers on in
preparation for the amount of spray
coming off the back of that truck.
[SIGNALING & PREPARING TO CHANGE LANES TO PASS TRUCK] And
actually he or she is doing really
well for speed, so I'm just going to hang
in behind them here and just leave my
windshield wipers on.
And basically you just want to follow
the other traffic here on the highway.
Most of the time they're going to stay
on the highway, and you can see both
shoulders. It's actually fairly clear
driving right now - just with your
windshield wipers on and lots of windshield washer
fluid, just in case the water coming
off the other vehicle isn't enough. Sometimes you can
get into a situation where it just makes
the windshield dirty and it never
actually gets clean.
I'm operating me
defrost controls in the vehicle because
the back window is fogged up.
And we're going to get off the main road
here and we're gonna go for a little
drive in the country and I'll show you
some of the techniques you can use in
the country, for not only driving in the
deeper snow, because some of these back
roads won't be plowed yet, because
the maintenance crews are simply
working on the main roads right now. And
as they get to farther and farther away
onto the secondary roads, just
know that that's not their priority
right now. The priority is to clean the
most traveled roads to make them safe
for the most number of vehicles. So
they'll get into the backcountry later.
So that's where we're gonna head. You can
see here on the road there that there is tons and
tons of salt sand on the roadways and
there's tons of spray coming off the
other vehicles here.
And we communicate to other traffic well in
advance that we're getting off the road, checking your mirrors behind you for following traffic.
And you can see that there's plenty of snow on
the off ramp. So you just want to keep
the vehicle in a straight line - that way
you're not going to lose control if it's
slippery. And slow right down to where
you want to turn here. You can see, I'm in
the deep snow here and it's actually
pulling the vehicle around quite a bit.
And in the wintertime, if you've got an
automatic vehicle, you're not going to
have the advantage of what i just did
there. What I did was I put it in third
gear and I was going too slow for third
gear, but I had lots of traction, lots of
torque on the tires, so therefore the
snow didn't pull me around as much as if
I had a vehicle equipped with an automatic transmission. You just
don't have that kind of control with an
automatic transmission in the snow. But
there's another video on the channel
here that shows you how to do a bit more
control with an automatic transmission
in the wintertime. I'll put a link up
here for you in the corners to have a
look at that
and that'll help you out in the snow
with an automatic transmission.
And you can see that the windshield is...
there's lots of dirt salt snow and
whatnot on the windshield here. I just have
to put some windshield washer fluid on
it.
And when you're in a manual transmission -
I'm in fifth gear here and you can see
that I'm doing less than 60 kilometers
an hour - less than 40 miles an hour.
The reason I have the transmission in 5th gear is because
I've got a lot more traction because
the wheels are less apt to spin at a
high gear. And I've got lots of torque
there. And that's helping with my
traction. And you can see I'm using lots of
windshield washer fluid with this day.
With it being very mild, it's gone up
above freezing - it's probably 1° or 2°
degrees (34°-36°F) now, and the snow is apt to melt.
So we just meet other traffic - we just
try to move over to the right as far as
possible. Obviously for most of you that drive on
the left hand side of the road you're
not going to be experiencing snow as we
have right now. On occasion you'll
have snow and ice in Australia or in the
UK (United Kingdom) - once in awhile you do get it, but not
very often for the most part. this road is
not too bad. It is snow-covered, and it is
fairly slick. We're going to find
another road here for you that is going
to be less plowed. And as long as you keep
the vehicle in a straight line you're
not going to lose control; you just work
the throttle
and just keep the vehicle in a straight
line. When you do around curves, corners
and turns - just nice and easy on the
steering wheel. And again, as I talked about
previously, you can use chop steering,
which is just turning the steering wheel, and
then bringing it back to straight, turn the steering wheel a
little bit, bring it back to straight.
That way it's going to regain traction
with the steer tires when you're turning
corners. That is one of the techniques
that you can use to turn corners in
compromised conditions.
And again, when you're getting over into
that deep snow there, you have to watch
that because you could potentially get
pulled into that deep snow. So try and
keep away from it when you have other
vehicles that you're passing as we just
did there. When there's oncoming traffic and
you have to get over.
And again, whenever you're turning watch
the traffic behind you. You can see right now
that I had to slow right down there
because it's pretty slick here on that
turn your. Even with my steel studded
snow tires
it is very slippery.
So keep that in mind when the
temperature is around 0°C (32°F)
And we're going up hill here and
you can see that the truck is working
pretty hard.
And again, you don't want to be getting
going too fast; they have sanded this
road here but there's a fair bit of snow
on the road still.
And you want to be looking as far down
the road you can to see oncoming traffic,
because you may have to get over and
actually stop. Because you don't want
to get over into that deep snow at all.
And again, we just work the throttle as
we're coming around the corner here and
we have a big 18-wheeler coming down the hill, so
we're going to try and give that rig as
much room as we can here. And just nice
and easy in the snow here.
I need to keep power to it because if you're into
that deep snow and you
start losing traction, and you're going
uphill - if you lose that momentum, that's
when you're going to get stuck. So you
gotta try and keep the vehicle going. So
there's kind of a medium there: you gotta
find of working the throttle and keeping the
vehicle moving. Because as long as you
keep the vehicle moving, it's less likely
that you're gonna get stuck. If you take
your foot off the throttle, you're
actually going to get stuck because the
vehicle just come to a stop and you
won't get enough traction to
get it going.
so I'm coming up over the top of the
hill here and I shifted into a higher gear
now to try and get some of that traction
back.
And again I got another vehicle coming
here and I'm just trying to move over to
the right as far as I can here to keep the
vehicle moving.
And I'm looking for side road here to
get into some of the deeper snow. A road that
probably hasn't been plowed here.
And there's a street right there. And again when you're
braking, you want to try and keep the
vehicle into a straight line because
you're going to have more control when
you're braking in a straight line then
if you're trying to turn in the
wintertime. You have to have separate use of the primary
controls. You are not going to be able to
steer and brake at the same time;
otherwise the vehicle--if you're
lucky--is just going to
continue in a straight line. And
again, when you come up and it's
compromised conditions like this and
it's slippery, make sure you look behind you,
make sure there are no other vehicles
coming up behind you because it's
very slick.
So just nice easy pressure on the
throttle - try and maintain traction as
you're going forward. And again, good
quality snow tires, good quality tires--
M + S or snowflake rated tires--are going
to help you with all of this. I've got a
person up here on a tractor plowing the
driveway, And again, you want to give
these people a wide berth because
they're backing up with the plow and
they're not really paying attention to
traffic as much as they should be.
So you always want to give them a wide
berth - slow right down when you're going
past them because that way you are
reducing the risk of a crash with them. [TRANSITION]
So we're on a back road here in a bit of
deep snow and again you just want to go
slow you just want to take your time
here. You don't want to be giving it a
lot of throttle because the more
throttle you give it, you're going to
lose traction - over-acceleration is going
to cause you to lose traction. Again you
want to brake early because you don't
want to actually get up to where you need
to stop and find out that you don't have
any traction to be able to stop the
vehicle. So always brake early, bring the
vehicle to a crawl and then creep up to
where you actually want to stop.
And when you're on these back suburban roads it's
important that you go slow because in
the wintertime there's kids out in these
residential areas and they're playing
street hockey, and those types of things or
doing other winter activities. So you
want to go slow in these residential
areas because you have compromised
traction, and the roads aren't well plowed. And
the path on the roadway is not very wide
and you want to scan well and scan all
the way across on both sides of the road and make
sure that there are no other road users
or other vehicles on the roadway.
Quick review of winter driving: make sure
you clean your vehicle off completely
before you depart so you can see and be
seen by other vehicles. Clean all the
glass and lights off before you depart.
As well, if the temperature's around
freezing, not only know that it's gonna
be slippery, but on the main roads there's going
to be a lot of spray coming off the
other vehicles because they're going to
be well salted and sanded. And that
melting snow and ice is going to create
water that's going to be very dirty
because of the sand that they put down
on the roadway. And it's going to create
spray ,so make sure you have your
windshield washer fluid topped up as well.
In preparation for winter driving make
sure you get good tires on your vehicle,
either M + S--mud & snow tires or tires
with the snowflake on them, or good
quality snow tires on your vehicle. As
well, if the windshield wipers need to be
replaced, change those out as well so
that you can see when you're using your
windshield washer fluid. Stop back from
where you actually want to stop and then
creep up because you might find that
when you get up to the intersection or
wherever else you need to stop you may
not stop because you're going to hit a
slippery patch of the roadway. So stop
back, slow down back actually, from where
you actually want to stop and then creep
up to where you want to stop. Work to
keep the vehicle in a straight line when
you're braking, especially when it's
slippery,
that way you're less likely to lose
control. Know that on turns you're not
going to be able to turn and brake at
the same time. Those two
primary controls are going to be
separate actions, so slow right down and
then turn. And actually, when you turn--
especially driving a front-wheel drive
vehicle--you might need to give it a bit
of throttle. One last point: if you're on
roads that aren't plowed and there's
shoulders where maintenance crews have banked up the snow,
and you're passing another vehicle--
there's oncoming traffic coming--you
need to get over - make sure you stay out
of that deep snow. Now if you do end up
driving in deep snow, make sure you keep
the momentum going on the vehicle
because of you stop, for whatever reason,
you may not get that vehicle going again
because now you're stuck. So if you're
driving in deep snow, keep the momentum
going. If you've got good quality tires on you
should be able to do that. Now if you
have any conditions in the wintertime
that are questionable whatsoever don't
use cruise control on slippery
conditions. Keep your foot on the
throttle and just work the throttle. Give
yourself lots of room to brake and brake
early. And as well when you're braking on
slippery conditions, make sure that you
check the mirrors and check the traffic
behind you because you don't want to be
slowing down or stopping and have a vehicle
piling into the backend of you because
they're tailgating you and following too
close and they can't get their vehicle
stopped. So those are some good tips for
winter driving that will keep you safe,
and again give yourself more time. This
is probably the most important tip... give
yourself more time; budget more time
because it is going to take you more
time to get to where you need to go in
the wintertime with less than
ideal driving conditions. Question for my
smart drivers: do you have any driving
tips for new drivers learning to drive
in the snow?
Leave a comment down in the comment
section there - all that helps out the
new drivers learning how to drive in
wintertime. I'm Rick with Smart Drive Test.
Thanks so much for watching. If you like
what you see here share, subscribe, leave
a comment down in the comment section. As
well, hit that thumbs up button. Check out
all the videos here on the channel if
you're working towards getting your
license or starting your career as a bus
or truck driver. Lots of great
information here; as well head or website
good information over there and online
courses that you can purchase. Stick
around to the end of the video - funny
bits, and links to the other videos and
to my website. Thanks again for watching.
Good luck on your road test. And remember,
pick the best answer not necessarily the
right answer. Have a great day. Bye now.
[DAUGHTER] Can we talk now? Yes, we're almost done - we're going to the conclusion.
[DAUGHTER[ When can we say hi? Just a minute
[SON] Daddy - after we finish the video can we....
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