After the news recently started publishing the first snow pictures, one question arises more often than not: have you done a winter vehicle check and is your fleet ready for the cold season? Despite both the UK and Ireland generally escaping the worst winters and the kind of heavy snowfall that affects other European areas, the dramatic changes to global climate has taught us that it is better to be prepared.
Last week, the UK woke up in the first blasts of snow and temperatures in the north of England fell to -3 Celsius. The Met Office’s website has pages dedicated to winter preparation with useful sections on vehicles and travelling in winter weather. In particular, there are two sections that you might find useful:
- Driving coaches and trucks in severe weather with the Highways Weather Watch link you can check before planning your trips
- Driving in severe weather
In Ireland, this year, the government has doubled the quantity of salt available for Irish roads and is preparing extra measures as part of plans to ensure the State can cope with severe weather. The measures were also made public last week with the launch of the campaign and website Be Winter Ready, prepared with the joint collaboration of the Garda, the HSE, the Office of Public Works and transport providers—they offer advice on how to handle severe weather events. A section of this website is dedicated to road safety, vehicle checks and winter driving.
Around 23% of citizens do not do any special preparation for winter. While these are rather worrying numbers if we think about them in terms of road users, they do not necessarily take into consideration fleets, which do need to have a proper “winterization” procedure for both the vehicles and the team.
We could easily sum up the necessary advice in these five points:
1 - Be prepared: don’t let the weather be an unwelcome surprise
2 - Check your tyres and consider the necessity of using winter types
3 - Use your lights and make sure you have proper visibility in any weather condition
4 - Keep a safe distance: it might need to be doubled in winter weather
5 - Plan your trips well in advance.
If you need further tools in order to plan for our winter vehicle check and train your drivers, check out our
in our fleet management resources section.
If you have done it already, what do you usually do in terms of preparation and internal processes in order to prepare your fleet for the winter weather?
For more information about tyre safety, check out of blog here.
