TIPS TO DRIVING SAFELY THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON

With the Christmas holidays just around the corner, many people in the Scarborough auto glass area are starting to make plans to make their way to visit family and friends from afar. This typically entails plenty of travel, including on the road. With the winter weather comes treacherous driving conditions, which means drivers need to take extra precautions to stay safe on the roads while traveling to their destinations of choice. Of course, driving in the winter is unlike driving in pristine summer conditions. Instead, winter roads are slippery, and visibility through a vehicle’s safety glass is often compromised with snowfalls.

Luckily, there are plenty of things that drivers can do to make sure they stay safe on their road trips and make it to their destinations without a hiccup. For starters, there are things that should be done to the vehicle itself before taking to the open road in the auto glass Toronto area in order to better prepare it for adverse road conditions. One of the first things that should be done is inspect the tires to make sure they have enough air pressure and that the treads are not overly worn. Ideally, they should be swapped for winter tires during the colder months of the year, as these specialized tires are better able to grip the road and prevent any slippage. Keeping the antifreeze topped up is another important task to help make sure the windshield is kept clear of any ice while driving. Obviously, visibility though is a huge factor when it comes to safe driving, so having this type of fluid topped up will ensure that you don’t have to make any emergency stops off the side of thread to manually clear the ice and snow.

Simple windshield washer fluid won’t do, as this will simply add another layer of thin ice on the windshield once it’s sprayed. Tying into the antifreeze are the windshield wipers, which also play a key role in optimizing visibility through auto glass on the road. Wipers that leave remnants of ice, snow and debris behind will do little to clear your view through your auto glass. Instead, they should be replaced with high quality wipers that will not let you down when they’re really needed. And speaking of the windshield itself, these incredibly important vehicle components are more prone to cracking under extremely cold temperatures, which will then warrant a trip to a North York auto glass shop. Glass is known to expand and contract as a result of temperature, so it’s vital not to expose it to sudden temperature fluctuations. Many drivers use a number of methods to try to melt ice off the vehicle’s windshields, but certain methods can actually do more harm than good. For instance, some drivers have been known to pour boiling water over top the safety glass in an effort to eliminate the sheet of ice that has formed. However, this can increase the odds of the windshield cracking.

Instead, it’s advisable to turn the defroster on and allow the windshield to warm up in a more gradual manner. This way, the glass itself is not shocked by the extreme change in temperature, which can lead to cracking and a trip to the Scarborough auto glass shop. No matter how durable and strong an windshield happens to be, it is still made of glass. Much like an ice-cold beverage glad scan crack when it is exposed to boiling water, so can a windshield crack in a similar manner. For these reasons alone, windshield repair from an auto glass expert is extremely important before and during extremely cold weather conditions.