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Next time you need to drive in the snow, make sure you avoid these mistakes. All Tech Automotive found this article on How Stuff Works Auto. 5 Common Mistakes You Should Avoid While Driving in the Snow 1. Thinking Your Four-wheel Drive Makes You Invincible While vehicles with four-wheel drive typically do perform better in snowy and icy driving conditions, the technology can backfire by giving drivers a false sense of safety. Four-wheel drive is used to send the specific amount of needed torque to each of your car's four tires to give it added traction to move forward through snowy roads. That doesn't mean, however, that you can race down the road at top speed in the snow and bring yourself to a quick stop. Four-wheel or all-wheel drive isn't going to give you the traction you need to brake. It can help you get through some difficult conditions, but it doesn't make you SuperSUV. 2. Not Being Prepared Many drivers find themselves caught off guard during the winter ... read more

Have you ever tried to get into your car after a snow storm and realized your car door has been frozen shut? This great article from the AllstateBlog has a great way to prevent this problem! Quick Fix: Prevent Car Doors From Freezing With Cooking Spray When dealing with the frigid temperatures of winter, there's not much worse than coming out to your car to find the doors frozen shut. According to Adam Savage's Tested, car doors freeze because water gets into the rubber seal around the door and hardens. Fortunately, there is a simple trick that may help prevent that, using nothing but ordinary household cooking spray.  Apply the spray to the door's rubber seal weekly during the coldest winter months, or as needed before expected icy, frigid storms, says Brian L. Gochenour, laser operations manager and sales engineer at Broadway Metal Works, a Broadway, Virginia-based metal fabricator.  Step 1: Grab some cooking spray. Any ordinary cooking spray should wor ... read more

If you've ever been in a car when it spins out, it can be a very scary experience. This article that we wanted to share with you comes from the Allstate Blog. How to Keep from Spinning Out on Slick Roads (And What to Do If It Happens) The cast of Ice Road Truckers knows everything about driving on icy road surfaces. If you think about it, it’s quite an accomplishment to haul one or more heavily loaded trailers through hundreds of miles of wintry conditions. And, if you’ve ever seen an episode, you probably noticed the expertise each demonstrates when his truck begins to spin out. Large trucks plus heavy loads equal a lot of momentum, and it takes a cool head and precise driving to prevent accidents. Not many of us drive huge 18-wheelers on icy highways in the far north, but everybody who lives in a climate with cold winters runs the risk of encountering icy roads. About 190,100 crashes per year happen on icy pavement, according to statistics from the Federal Highway A ... read more

All Tech Automotive wants you to be prepared this winter. This great article comes from the AllState.  Building Your Car’s Winter Emergency Kit Challenging winter weather is a fact of life for much of the country. Frigid temperatures, freezing rain, snow drifts and icy roads may all be part of your winter driving season. Imagine that you’re driving late at night, and there’s a major snowstorm. Or, maybe you have car trouble. Perhaps you slide off the road and get stuck. Or, what if you got into an accident, and now the occupants of multiple vehicles are stranded? Keeping a properly stocked winter car emergency kit may help you survive. What to Choose for Your Winter Emergency Kit If you live in, or expect to drive through, an area that suffers from winter weather (including freezing temperatures, snow and ice), the Colorado Department of Transportation suggests your emergency kit should include these items: First aid kit Essential medications Flares or refl ... read more

Have you ever wondered how common things work, like a seatbelt? This article we found comes from How Stuff Works: Auto.  How Seatbelts Work In a typical seatbelt system, the belt webbing is connected to a retractor mechanism. The central element is the retractor is a spool, which is attached to one end of the webbing. Inside the retractor, a spring applies a rotation force, or torque, to the pool. This works to rotate the spool so it winds up any loose webbing.  When you pull the webbing out, the spool rotates counter-clockwise, which turns the attached spring in the same direction. Effectively, the rotating spool works to untwist the spring. The spring wants to return to its original shape, so it resists this twisting motion. If you release the webbing, the spring will tighten up, rotating the spool clockwise until there is no more slack in the belt.  The retractor has a locking mechanism that stops the spool from rotating when the car is involved in a collision. The ... read more

Backup cameras pay a big role in keeping you safe because they allow you to see your blind spots better. This article the All Tech Automotive found on Fix explains this in more detail. The Rise of the Backup Camera What is a Backup Camera? Backup or rearview cameras are small, wide-angle cameras mounted in the rear of a vehicle, and connected either to the infotainment screen on the instrumental panel, or a small monitor in the rearview mirror itself. The idea for a camera replacing a rearview mirror can be traced back as far as 1956, when Buick introduced the Centurion concept car at the 1956 Motorama Show in Detroit. According to the GM Heritage Center's website, "the Centurion featured a television camera in the rear to report traffic to the driver via a television screen in the dashboard, replacing the rearview mirror." The Centurion's camera never made it to production, and the idea never really came to fruition for another 50 years. In 1991, the Japan home m ... read more

As a driver, it is important to know your car and it's especially important to know when your car needs something new, like new brake pads. All Tech Automotive found this article on Geico.com. 5 Signs You Need New Brake Pads There are a lot of car owners out there who don't consider brake maintenance a priority - until something goes wrong. Do not make this mistake. When you hit the brake pedal, a complex network of parts springs into action. In order for the system to keep functioning properly, certain pieces must be replaced at regular intervals. Among those components, the ones that you'll probably be switching out the most often are your brake pads. What are "brake pads" and how do they work? In most modern automobiles, the front two wheels have a braking apparatus that depend on what are known as rotors: metallic discs found behind each wheel. Above each of these is a clamp-like device called the caliper. When you hit your brake pedal, the calipers start t ... read more

It's a common practice to warm up your car during the winter time before driving, and as much as it might be more comfortable for you to do that, it might not be the best idea for your car. All Tech Automotive found this article on The Washington Post. The Biggest Winter Energy Myth: That You Need to Idle Your Car Before Driving  We've all heard the idea: In winter, your car needs a little time to warm up before you can drive it. And that's why across the United States, people whole live in cold and snowy places, and especially those whose cars have remote starters, often fire up their engines long before they start driving. Heck, they might even start the car from the kitchen in the morning, and only then start the coffee brewing.  But it turns out that this idea of idling your car during the winter is just wrong. And so are the many, many Americans who believe it. One 2009 study found that on average, Americans thought they should idle for over 5 minutes befor ... read more

I'm sure I'm not the first one to say that I've gone to start my car in the morning on a particularly cold day and it wouldn't start. All Tech Automotive found this article on why this happens and how to prevent it. Why Do Car Batteries Go Dead in the Winter? While it's true that winter is a fairly common time for car batteries to die, some sources actually suggest that more batteries die in the summer than in the winter. So you may be dealing with a case of confirmation bias, but that doesn't mean you're totally off in left field. This is why it's a great idea to have your battery checked out and to have some regular battery maintenance performed in the fall before it has the chance to leave you stranded in a snowstorm. The science behind lead-acid battery technology actually shows how both hot and cold weather can be unkind to the life and operation of a car battery. Even though the hot weather is a real battery killer, for a number of reasons, cold ... read more

Happy New Year! All Tech Automotive wanted to share this article with you to find out if New Year's Day is truly one of the most dangerous days to drive.  Driving on New Year's Day Go out on New Year's Eve (which probably means you'll be coming home on New Year's Day) and you'll probably be implored by friends and family to be careful. Take a cab. Lots of drunk drivers out, obviously. It makes sense that the New Year's holiday would be a busy one for law enforcement and emergency response teams. And it is. But, believe it or not, New Year's Day is not the most treacherous day of the year to be behind the wheel. Before going any further, let's clarify this: None of what we are about to say means that it's a good idea to be reckless on New Year's Eve. It's a safe bet that several of the drivers on the road should not be in a car. Just because thee are statistically more car crashes on other days doesn't mean you shouldn't be ... read more