In partnership with ATS Euromaster. All research and findings are my own.
Regular readers will know that car maintenance isn’t exactly one of my strong points. Remember when that warning light came on on my dashboard and I just put the satsuma in front of it until one day I tried to turn a corner and the steering wheel wouldn’t move?
*looks awkward*
Having a basic understanding of your car though, things like winter tyres and car safety in general, could save your life, so it’s important to feel confident when it comes to the basics. Winter especially is a dangerous time to be on the roads – road traffic accidents increase by 20% during the winter, and many of these accidents could be prevented by safe winter driving.
Winter is also apparently an excellent time of the year for me to be especially stupid about my car. It was a winter a few years ago when I decided that it would be an excellent idea to scrape the ice off my windscreen with the base of a tin of paint I happened to be collecting from the car boot.
I know, I’m an idiot, but it was so handy. It worked really well too, and it wasn’t until the next time it rained and suddenly the windscreen was a cobweb of tiny scratches that I started to realise the mistake I’d made.
Give me a break… I can write novels, make my own Jaffa cakes and pose naked in front of strangers, just not cars… nobody’s perfect right??
*changes subject quickly*
I was interested then to test our collective winter driving knowledge with the ATS Euromaster winter driving myth challenge. I shared 10 top driving myths on Instagram to see exactly how smart we all our when it comes to winter driving – over 250 people took part and let’s just say a C+ overall, room for improvement. I’ve shared the results below.
If you’re as old as me you will remember ATS very clear from their ‘SOS? ATS!’ TV ad, which I just found on YouTube and discovered is now thirty years old. Good grief. Whoever came up with it though was a genius because it’s stayed in my head this whole time.
ATS Euromaster have been around way longer than this ad though – they actually go back as far as 1965. They are one of the leading tyre and vehicle service providers in the UK and are the only tyre specialist to hold a gold award from The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. If anyone is going to know about safe winter driving then it feels to me like it’s going to be ATS Euromaster.
So, how did we all get on in the ATS Euromaster winter driving myth challenge? I’d say it was a mixed bag generally, highlighting scope for learning, which is always useful.
I’ve compiled the results into a little graphic for you below so you can see how you’d have fared against my Instagram community. The one that really shocked me was that you can be fined for leaving your engine running while you’re defrosting your car. Did you know that you are not allowed to leave your car running while it is stationary? Plus if your vehicle is stolen while you are defrosting it, your insurance it also likely to be invalid.
Every day’s a school day right?
I also felt particularly called out by the fact that the one that most people knew was that pouring hot water on your windscreen is NOT a safe way to de-ice. Needless to say this was my preferred method before paint-tin-gate…
I’d love to hear in the comments if any of these surprised you and have made you think about winter driving in a new way!
