Driving tips for the motorway at night
29th March 2013
Driving tips for the motorway at night
Driving after the sun goes down is a rather different experience to driving in daylight. Speed is harder to judge, distances can be hard to calculate, and facing a wall of headlights can cause distraction and impaired vision.
Britain’s top advanced driver, Peter Rodger of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, offers some tips on driving in the dark on the motorway, to make your journey as safe and enjoyable as possible:
- To improve your view as far as possible, keep your lights and windscreen clean. Clean the inside of your windscreen as well as the exterior.
- Use main beam to maximise the distance you can see ahead, but when other drivers are approaching dip your lights to avoid dazzling them.
- Turn off your interior lights and dim the dashboard if possible to reduce interior reflections on your windows.
- Make sure you can stop safely within the distance you can see to be clear. Stopping distances should be increased in hours of darkness, more so if winter weather has made the roads more slippery.
- If you’re feeling tired, caffeine alone is not a fix. Take a break and have a 20-minute nap in a safe location. Opening your window to let some cool fresh air in will also perk you up.
- Look at how the traffic in front behaves for clues to possible problems you can’t see yet. Especially stay on the lookout for brake lights up ahead.
- If you break down, pull over on to the hard shoulder and stop as far to the left as you can, pointing your wheels in towards the kerb. Then leave your vehicle and stand behind a crash barrier if there is one.
“Currently there are several stretches of motorway in Britain which have no lighting, making the hours of darkness even more challenging for motorists,” Peter Rodger said. “But this shouldn’t put you off driving. The roads are a lot quieter, making it a suitable time to make continuous progress.”