Essential road safety checks for winter driving

Why winter is harder on your car than you think

London winters are rarely dramatic. We get a handful of frosty mornings, a bit of sleet, and a lot of grey, wet, dark afternoons. That is precisely why winter driving catches so many people out. On a typical January day it can be dark by half four, the roads are greasy with a fine film of rain and grit, and the traffic in front of you is stopping and starting every few hundred yards.

Those conditions put a specific kind of strain on a car. Short journeys never let the engine or battery fully warm up. Windscreens steam up. Brakes sit damp overnight and rust a little on the discs. Lights, wipers and heaters all get used far more than they do in June. None of it is glamorous maintenance, but a spare hour now will save you a miserable morning on the hard shoulder later.

Start with the lights — you will use them every single journey

Between November and February, most London drivers use their lights on every trip. That makes a blown bulb far more than an inconvenience: a failed brake light or headlight is both an MOT failure and a genuine safety risk when visibility is poor.

• With the help of someone else, check headlights on dipped and full beam, sidelights, indicators, brake lights, reversing lights, rear fog lights and the number plate lights. That is a lot of bulbs, and the rear ones are the ones you never see fail.
• Look at the lenses as well as the bulbs. A cloudy, scratched headlamp can cut the useful light on the road dramatically, and a polish kit or a replacement unit is cheap compared with a night-time near miss.
• Clean the glass and the lenses properly. Road film and salt build-up can knock a surprising amount of light off the road, and it is the same film that smears across your windscreen when a lorry passes.
• Use rear fog lights only when visibility genuinely drops below about 100 metres. Left on in ordinary rain, they dazzle the driver behind and can mask your brake lights.

Tyres: the difference between stopping and sliding

Tyres are the only part of the car touching the road, and cold, wet tarmac is where they earn their keep. The legal minimum tread depth in the UK is 1.6mm across the central three-quarters of the tyre, but for winter driving that is not a sensible target. Many tyre specialists and safety bodies suggest aiming for at least 3mm before the cold weather arrives, because tread clears water and a worn tyre simply cannot shift it fast enough.

• Check tread with a proper gauge rather than a coin, and check each tyre in several places across the width — uneven wear tells you about alignment and suspension as well as tread life.
• Check pressures when the tyres are cold, using the figures on the driver's door pillar or fuel flap rather than the maximum on the sidewall. Pressure drops roughly 1 psi for every 10°C fall in temperature, so tyres that were fine in September can be noticeably soft by December.
• Look for cuts, bulges, cracking and objects in the tread, including the inner sidewalls you cannot see from the kerb. A bulge means the tyre is scrap — no arguments.
• Don't forget the spare, or the inflation kit if that is what you have. A can of sealant is much less use in the cold than a properly inflated spare wheel.

Brakes — know what yours feel like

You cannot inspect your own brake pads in a supermarket car park, but you can notice change. A pedal that feels soft, spongy or travels further than usual before biting suggests air or fluid problems and needs attention straight away. Squealing, grinding, or the car pulling to one side under braking all point to worn pads, sticking calipers or corroded discs.

Brake fluid absorbs moisture over time and should typically be changed every couple of years; old fluid boils more easily and can freeze in extreme cold. If your car is due a service, book it before the worst of the weather. And on the first frosty morning of the year, find a quiet stretch of road and test your brakes gently at low speed so you know how much grip is actually there.

Wipers, screen wash and clear glass

Gritted roads throw up a fine spray that turns a clean windscreen into a smear in seconds. Worn wiper blades make it far worse, leaving streaks that flare badly in oncoming headlights.

• Replace wiper blades roughly once a year, or as soon as they judder, squeak or leave lines. They are inexpensive and take minutes to fit.
• Top up screen wash with a proper winter concentrate, diluted for at least -10°C. Plain water freezes in the jets and the bottle, and it will not shift road film.
• Clean the inside of the windscreen. Winter condensation plus a grimy interior film is a recipe for heavy glare at night. A microfibre cloth and a little warm water does the job.
• Keep a scraper and de-icer in the car. Demisting with the heater alone takes far longer than clearing the glass properly, and driving with a small clear patch is both illegal and dangerous.

Battery, fluids and a five-minute weekly walk-round

Cold weather is brutal on batteries, and short London journeys never quite recharge them. A battery that is three to five years old is a candidate for replacement before it strands you. Warning signs include a slow, laboured turn-over on chilly mornings, dimming lights at idle and repeated flat starts after the car has sat for a few days. If you mostly do very short trips, a fortnightly longer run — or a trickle charger if you have off-street parking — makes a real difference.

While you are under the bonnet, check the coolant level when the engine is cold, make sure it is the correct strength of antifreeze, and top up the oil. Then get into the habit of a quick weekly walk-round: lights, tyres, wipers, washer fluid, and a look for anything hanging loose underneath after a kerb scrape. Five minutes on a Sunday morning, in the dry, beats twenty frantic ones on a wet Monday evening — and it keeps you moving safely through whatever the winter sends our way.