Winter Driving Tips

Someone who had recently moved to Colorado, asked on our Word of Mouth group, about classes on snow/ice driving. My feedback was: Glad you're looking for advice! 👍 There’s no substitute for good judgment, and that comes from training and experience, and you can get some of that in a winter driving course, so definitely find and take one. In the meantime, here are some tips:

• An All Wheel Drive (AWD) car will get you going in slippery conditions, which is awesome, but it won’t help you stop any faster - all cars have four wheel brakes. 
• Front wheel drive (FWD) cars are more controllable when slightly accelerating (foot barely on the gas), and rear wheel drive (RWD) cars are more stable when lightly decelerating (foot off the gas). The operative word here is "lightly" since any big changes can cause you to lose control. 
• Locking your brakes will take away all your steering, so be really gentle, when trying to brake in loose traction. Gently reduce your braking, if the car starts sliding sideways. Keep your front wheels turning, so you can use them to steer. 
• Anti-lock brakes (ABS) will help you maintain directional control, but they won’t slow you down any faster.
• Tight (or sometimes any) turns at speed can easily get you off the road. Snow tires with good tread depth can help with that. Studded tires are amazingly helpful, but they tear up the roads, so get them changed back to regular tires, after the snow/ice season ends.
• Plan way ahead in slippery conditions. Time and distance are your friends here. 
• Black ice is just a description of frozen water on the road, which is extremely slippery. The light reflects off it differently, so that the road, which normally looks grayish in headlights at night, looks black. Brakes have almost no effect in these conditions, so all you can do, is try to maintain control as best you can, until you get to better road conditions ahead.
• Sometimes when conditions are really bad/slippery, like when fresh dry snow has fallen over a layer of frozen rain, the smartest decision is to stay where you are for awhile. 
• Never forget, one of your biggest risks is from other drivers who are not as experienced and careful as you. You can help them out, by anticipating their poor choices, and not being where they are heading, when they get there. One thing that helps with this, is a safe following distance. Never use car lengths - it’s a terribly obsolete method to judge a safe distance. Use timing, which compensates for speed - stay at least two seconds behind a car in front of you in dry conditions, and increase that to 3-4 seconds or more, in slippery conditions. 
• There is such a thing as going so slow as to be a risk to other drivers, even if they’re going too fast to be safe. If you find yourself having difficulty staying in control while keeping up with traffic, that’s a red flag that you may be beyond your own capabilities at the moment, or they may all be going too fast for conditions. Regardless of the reason, you might want to get out of that particular traffic flow as soon as you safely can. 
• If it snows before you get a chance to take a winter driving class, you might consider going to an empty parking lot, and trying to drive quickly in tight circles (donuts), to get a sense of how much easier it is to lose traction in those conditions, but watch out for the location of islands and light posts, to avoid damaging your car and ego while practicing. 
• Leave early to allow for slower traffic and accidents. 
• Look at Google Maps to get a sense of traffic conditions before you go. It may help you determine how much earlier you need to leave, and show you alternate routes that may work better.
• The CDOT website sometimes has a good depiction of road conditions.
• Don’t drive with obscured vision. Get one of those cool long brushes to get the majority of the loose snow off your windows and mirrors before you start moving. If you leave a thick layer of snow on top of your car, be aware that it could slide forward over your windshield the next time you stop quickly, blinding you. If you park your car outside, consider leaving an extra 10 minutes earlier, so you can sit in your car and let the ice on the windows melt, after you knock the loose snow off with your cool new brush. You really don’t need to be out in the cold, scraping your windows clear, so just sit comfortably in your car with the defrosters going, and let it melt, until you can just brush it off.
  
• And here is a link to a Google search result for winter driving - with lots of other resources.
  
• Welcome to Colorado, good luck and be safe out there!