Hydroplaning, also known as aquaplaning, occurs when a car loses contact with the road and the tires skate on top of a thin layer of water, which can cause a vehicle to lose control. Hydroplaning can occur wherever wet road conditions are present, even if it has stopped raining. Here’s how to prevent hydroplaning and what you should do if you are caught in this situation. It doesn’t take much water to cause a car to hydroplane. In fact, roads are the slipperiest when it first starts to rain as oil residue mixes with water to form a dangerous concoction. Hydroplaning causes a vehicle’s tires to lift off the road. As a result, the vehicle may suddenly shift to one side, causing the driver to temporarily lose control. Further, the vehicle may slam into other cars, hit an abutment or flip over and roll down an embankment. There is no telling what will happen to a vehicle once steering and braking abilities have been lost. You can prevent hydroplaning by ensuring that your tires are properly inflated and have sufficient tread levels.
Worn tires are particularly more likely to lead to hydroplaning when road conditions are wet.When road conditions are wet, decrease your speed. Research covered by Consumer Reports reveals that road contact is reduced the faster a vehicle travels. Whereas you may have full contact with the road at 20 mph, that connection is reduced incrementally at faster speeds and all but disappears at high speeds — even in vehicles equipped with new tires. 2. Avoid puddles and standing water. When considering how to prevent hydroplaning, you should always avoid pools of standing water. The road may be dry, but a deep enough puddle could cause your vehicle to spin out of control if you don’t take precautions. Standing water can be deceiving in that it may be much deeper than it appears and could cause you to lose control. 3. Turn off the cruise control. Cruise control is a great way to improve your fuel mileage when it is in use; however, it can also cause hydroplaning if you keep it on when the roads are wet.
Cruise control is designed to help you maintain your speed, which is precisely what you don’t want to do when road conditions are wet.If you hit water and your car begins to spin out of control, don’t panic. At this point, you’re not looking at preventing hydroplaning so much as how to get out of it. Gradually pump your brakes until the tires catch hold of the road. Maintain control of the steering wheel while avoiding sudden turns. If possible, shift the transmission into neutral and point your car in the direction you want it to go. Your foot should be off the accelerator until control has been restored. There are other matters to keep in mind when considering how to prevent hydroplaning. For cars equipped with manual transmissions, you should shift to a lower gear. When shopping for new tires, look for those that provide superior hydroplaning counteraction. Ultimately, if travel conditions are especially hazardous, turn off of the highway as soon as it is safe to do so, take a break and wait for conditions to improve.
For more information on how to prevent hydroplaning, chat with a knowledgeable expert at your local NAPA AUTO PARTS store.Please, wait while we are validating your browserI’d always noticed that my dad could make it up hills where others couldn’t, and that while others spun, crashed and slid into the ditch, we’d always kept going and made it home safe. My father pulled away a blue tarpaulin to reveal a set of freshly painted steel wheels, each mounted with a winter tire. As we torqued the new wheels onto our Mercury, my father began his lessons on tire technology and the art of winter driving.“It’s not going to snow for a few weeks,” he told me. “But you can’t wait for that – summer tires don’t work in the cold.” Then he explained why it was foolish to use only two winter tires [like most drivers did back then]: “Two wheels do the acceleration,” he said. “But that just gets you into trouble. Once you’re moving, all four wheels have to do the braking and cornering.”
My father died 14 years ago, but his teachings were the beginning of a lifelong education. The key point: winter tires really work. Not using them is like driving a car without seatbelts – you’re passing on a critical safety feature. The value of winter tires has been driven home by my own testing, consultation with experts and by statistics: in Quebec, where they have been mandatory since 2008, winter collisions have fallen by 17 per cent, and crashes causing serious injury or death are down 36 per cent.Exploring winter tire technology can be a druidic quest (amazingly, not everyone gets excited as I do about siping, hysteresis and angular momentum). So we’re going to boil down a catalogue of knowledge into a primer that compresses the knowledge of countless people I’ve met over the years – engineers, mechanics, driving instructors, ice racers, tire designers, chemists who design rubber that can stick to ice and, of course, my long-departed dad – the guy who never crashed.1.
All-season tires are a bad compromise. On snow, ice or cold pavement, the stopping distance of a car with winter tires can be up to 30 to 40 per cent shorter than one with all-seasons. Since the force of a crash increases as the square of impact speed, this could be the difference between life and death.2. Although it’s the treads that you notice, the most important part of a winter tire is actually its rubber compound, which is designed to stay soft in freezing temperatures. Like a gecko climbing a sheet of glass, a tire sticks to the road by conforming to minute imperfections. The soft rubber treads of a winter tire are able to splay and wrap themselves around minute protrusions on cold pavement, or even on what may appear to be perfectly smooth ice. Summer tires, which are designed to operate in warm temperatures, harden as the temperature falls. All-seasons, which must be designed for year-round use, cannot match winter tires in low temperatures.3. Premium winter tires perform better than basic models.