5 Driving Essentials You Need This Winter
Winter is coming. No, ignore the cheap Game of Thrones reference, it’s actually just a few weeks away.
Fun times with Christmas on the horizon and any excuses to curl up inside and avoid socialising in the meantime, but not so great news if you’re out on the roads. Driving can be at its trickiest over the winter as the roads get icier, nights get darker, and a general disdain for being out of the house grows.
With a little bit of preparation, though, you can make your driving life a little bit easier at least. Here are five essentials we’d keep on hand.
Triple QX concentrated screenwash - 5L
As the rain falls more often, the salt gritters will soon be dusted off the cake, the roads and mud somehow finding a way to cling to pretty much every perceivable surface, your wipers and screenwash will be working overtime over the winter.
With that in mind, it’s worth having a decent supply of screenwash on hand for those regular top-ups. This five-litre should do the trick, designed to be used neat over the winter or diluted once things start to brighten up a little bit.
Streetwize ice scraper with mitt
You’re already running late for work, and things only get worse when you open the curtains to see that frost has taken over. The windscreen is frozen over, and you can’t for the life of you remember where you put last year’s plastic ice scraper.
Your options include having to dig out an old credit card to furiously scrape with and freeze your hand at the same time, or having to run back and forth between the house and some obtuse trick with a bag of water.
Save yourself the hassle and keep this scraper from Streetwize in your glovebox. Doubling up as a mitt, it’ll keep your hand warm while you effectively clear your windscreen.
Prestone de-icer aerosol
Better still, having a can of de-icer on hand should make clearing things even easier – or double up as a lethal combo.
This one from Prestone is rated at working up to -40C, so it will easily be able to tackle whatever a British winter can throw at your windscreen on any given morning.
Sakura emergency bulb kit
While carrying a backup set of bulbs in your car year-round is a sensible idea anyway, it feels even more so during the winter as the nights get longer.
Something like this emergency bulb kit from Sakura is the sort of thing that could prove a godsend over the winter. Not only does it include halogen replacements for your headlamps and taillamps, but also foglights, number plates and indicators.
Top Tech 3-in-1 jump start power pack
Ah, that one clear weekend in December has finally come. Your old pride and joy has been tucked away waiting for the weather to ease a little bit, and the time has come for a nice winter blast out. Only, you forgot to disconnect the battery, and now it’s flat.
Good news, though, is you bought yourself a jump-start pack just like this one from Top Tech. Without needing the help of another person or car, you can quickly get your car started and on its way. This 3-in-1 pack also triple us as an air compressor and worklight as well, in case you need to pump up your tyres or need an extra bit of brightness for a last-minute job.
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