WET WEATHER DRIVING TIPS—By Glen Edmunds

The rainy season is upon us once again in East Africa! Kenya Tanzania and Uganda will be experiencing heavy rains for the next two months. Rain introduces a variety of dangerous factors to driving: visibility is reduced, traction between your tyres and the road is reduced and your car handles with much less of its dry-road predictability. So, even though you might be cruising along at highway speed, in an apparently harmless rain shower, your normal safety margins are cut by an unknowable amount. Hatari! This is very dangerous!

Why So Slippery?

Your car needs traction to accelerate, turn or stop. Your tyres develop their maximum traction on clean, dry asphalt. Add dirt, dust, diesel, and engine oil from exhausts, or water, and grip is greatly reduced. The way your car responds to wet asphalt can be affected by many factors. The texture of the asphalt can make a huge difference in the levels of grip that's available. Roads with a lot of "abrasive surface" can offer surprising traction when wet, as long as you're not driving through standing water. Road surfaces, worn smooth, by years of use, offer much less grip in the same weather conditions. And steel bridge grates, manhole covers and paint stripes are notoriously slick when wet.

Intersections, roundabouts, "T" junctions and other high-traffic/low-speed areas collect a lot of slippery engine fluids. The first rain after a long dry spell can be particularly treacherous as all these fluids, combined with light rainfall, make for a low-grip surface.

Gain Every Advantage

• The best thing you can do in wet weather driving is to slow down.
• Allow longer stopping distances and drive as smoothly as possible.
• Avoid hard acceleration (particularly when cornering)
• Keep yourself out of situations that will require hard, heavy braking.
• When slowing in the rain, keep braking smooth and consistent

Most modern cars are now fitted with an anti-lock braking system (ABS). This is a system on vehicles, which prevents the wheels from locking while braking. The purpose of this is to allow the driver to maintain steering control under heavy braking and, in most situations, to shorten braking distances (by allowing the driver to hit the brake fully without the fear of skidding or loss of control). Previously ABS was only fitted onto top end, expensive vehicles, but now it is coming fitted more and more as standard equipment. Many drivers don't understand the system and how it works. They also don't know that it is designed specifically for low grip situations, such as rain, ice and snow.

ABS-equipped cars react very differently than standard cars not fitted with the devise. To operate: Stamp on hard on the brake as required and let the ABS do the rest. Ignore any pulsing you might feel in the brake pedal or buzzing or clicking noises (signs that the ABS is working) and hold the pedal down hard. If you can't stop in time to avoid a collision, consider swerving around the obstacle. The ABS will give you enough steering control to maneuver and brake simultaneously.

Watch Out!

When conditions are conducive to hydroplaning (heavy rain or standing water), small signals can forewarn of a dangerous situation. When you're driving at speeds over about 48kph (30 mph) and feel the steering wheel "kick back" or feel momentarily "disconnected," that's nature's way of telling you to look out! Don't ignore the warning. Even if you go no faster, areas of deeper water or smoother asphalt could cause a long enough period of hydroplaning to cause you to lose control of the car.

Also remember you have no way of telling what a puddle may be concealing. It could be a fairly harmless half-inch-deep pothole or it could be the depth of a moon crater - either way, the appearance is the same. Obviously, the feeling of driving through it would be drastically different.

If your car doesn't have ABS, you'll have to modulate your foot pressure on the brake pedal to get as much deceleration as possible without causing the brakes to lock up and the tyres to skid. Once they lock, you'll have less total stopping power and lose all directional control - neither of which is a good thing. At times like this, that ABS option doesn't sound nearly as extravagant as it did back in the showroom! Should you now require turning the vehicle while the brakes are locked you must release some pedal pressure to ensure that the front wheels start turning to accommodate the steering. Avoid “target fixation” and look where you want the vehicle to steer. Remember "your hand follow your eyes!"

CAR PREPARATION FOR THE RAINY SEASON

• Don’t clean the screen with the same cloth as you use to clean the whole car! And if you have staff that cleans your car for you, make sure they understand this! Road grime, small pieces of stone, polish, and wax deposits on the cloth can be wiped onto the windscreen and smear or even scratch it. Although the screen may look clean during the day, “just add water” and it becomes a whole different view. Add driving in the rain at night, with headlights coming toward you, and you will have the equivalent of temporary blindness. Clean the screen with old newspaper, which will get the screen clean, with no deposits.
• Change wiper blades regularly. The next time your car goes for a service and the shop changes the blades, don’t question the wisdom! New blades are a must and should be changed every six months. This is an area where you must insist on the best. Always use a high quality wiper blade.
• Keep additive in the water for those pesky dudus (insects) that invariably draw to your screen by the thousands. Water on their own won’t cut through their fatty substances.
• A vast majority of accidents in the rain are caused because the tyres are bald or in bad condition. If you have to economize, always keep the good tyres on the front. They are the ones that cut through the water first and leave a “dry” line for the rear tyres to follow.
• Rotate your tyres regularly to keep an even wear.
• Tyre pressure in the rain is critical; keep them at the recommended pressure.
• Be aware that large, heavy 4 x 4’s, fitted with off-road tyres, will NOT give you as much grip as normal road tyres in wet conditions. The reasons for this are numerous. Firstly, in wet conditions you want a soft pliable tyre with good tread that pushes water away from the centre of the tyre. You need as much tyre surface or “footprint” in contact with the road surface as possible. Off-road tyres have a harder sidewall and less flexibility. This equates to hard tyres that have a smaller “footprint” which gives you less grip.
• Hard bush suspension will only exaggerate bad handling in the rain and cause the vehicle to be unpredictable. This is because hard suspension causes tyres to skip across the tarmac and they don’t get enough “bite” on the road surface.