Tips on Traveling During Holidays

I’m making this video for you in January of 2022. Now the calendar tells me it’s winter. I look outside, it’s blue skies and almost 70 degrees, but we often find ourselves driving on winter roads. That means there’s water, rain, snow, wind, weather. There are some tips that I can give you to help keep you safer on the roadway and to help make sure that you arrive at your destination safely. We just passed the holidays, so I had an opportunity to do a little research about holiday travel. AAA, the national auto insurer, keeps data about vehicle trips. One of the pieces of information that I found was that for the year 2020, it was expected that there would be 107 million Americans on the road at Christmas time. That means about one-third of the entire population was traveling for Christmas. Almost 90% of those folks are traveling by vehicle. Some small percentage are traveling by bus, train, and plane, but almost everybody’s in the car, and almost everybody’s on the road. According to the AAA data, almost all of those trips were considered long distances, which means more than 50 miles in each direction.

But I looked at some additional data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration that talked about the average vehicle trip distance at Christmas time at 275 miles. What this means is that in the wintertime, you’re going to find yourself on roads that are very busy with people who are driving long distances. So when you find yourself on a wet roadway, it’s important to slow down. Your vehicle’s braking system works at its maximum efficiency when the roads are dry and warm. Not too hot, not too cold. But in the wintertime, we find ourselves with cold roadway services, lower tire temperatures, and wet braking systems. That means your stopping distance is going to be much longer than it would be on a lovely, warm spring or summer day. We have other conditions out there on the roadway that can affect us as we move along, like snow. Snow makes everything that you experience with rain all that much worse. Your traction is minimal, roadway services are freezing, and braking systems don’t work as well for several reasons, not just the moisture on the roadway but also the lack of friction between the tire and the roadway surface.

Your obligation when you’re driving on the road is to drive at a safe speed for a condition, but that doesn’t mean that all the other drivers out there on the roadway are going to be doing that. So give yourself a little extra space, drive cautiously, drive defensively, and slow down so that you’re sure you’re going at a speed that’s safe for yourself and the other drivers on the roadway. Almost every case we deal with here involving an auto accident involves either a distracted driver or a driver going too fast. If you’ve been injured by the negligence of someone else, including the driver who was doing that or something else on the roadway that brought you injury, give us a call. The consultation of the Arthofer & Tonkin Law offices are free, and if we meet with you, you’ll speak with an actual attorney who will answer your questions about what you’ve been through. We look forward to talking with you. Thank you for your time.