Tailight Right
Tailight Right
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US $85.00
Useful Car Tips For Long Drives
My version of a vacation is picking a couple of destinations, renting a car, and going. I like my vacations to be sort of off the cuff. While it adds a bit to the stress factor during the vacation, I can't be accused of planning my vacation more carefully than my finances. Here are some tips I thought of at around 2,300 miles somewhere in the Carolinas.
- Driving is very stressful when you have limited visibility, so do everything you can to increase your visibility especially at night, during fog, and during rain.
- During the day this means don't tailgate. Some people get off on this, but I hate it. I also don't like being behind the minivan, SUV, or Tractor Trailor because I can't see in front of them and I have no idea when they'll react to something on the road. This means I only have the time I notice them behaving strangely until impact to act. Brake lights can mean slowing down or stopping short, and it's harder than you think to tell which during that split second. So stay behind cars you can see around, and keep a respectful distance.
- During fog, or at night, especially in the pitch black Carolinas or 90% of the country that isn't on the east coast, your visibility is limited to what your headlights can cover. More than once something dark popped up in the road (mostly roadkill) and I didn't have time to react well to it. I was able to decrease my stress and increase my response time by staying several hundred feet behind another car. This way I could see them react to something and I would know I would have to too. Also, their headlights extended the distance of my own headlights as to how far ahead I could see. Finally, seeing just a few red dots of tailights way in the distance was reassuring. They meant that I would know well ahead of time what right and left turns would be coming up.
- Use Rain-X. During light rain, you won't even need to use your windshield wipers, and during heavy rain they increase visibility in between wiper blade swipes.
- If it's within an hour of your normal sleep schedule, go to sleep. Whether or not you know it, your reaction time is down. The military did a study where they attached these watches that tracked movements and later they drilled soliders with reaction tests, and during periods of the day where they typically slowed down their wrist movements i.e. sleep, rest, their reaction times were slower even when they were awake.
- Cheapest gas of the whole trip: Exit 130 in Virginia off of I95, Wa Wa gas station at $1.1899 per gallon, plus there's a strip mall where you can buy books on tape, eat, shop and such. There are lines at Wa Wa, which is hilarious. I guess the gas is popular. This is a great place for walkie talkies - "I'm going to look at CD's, you can go look for something to entertain you in the car."
- When selecting music for the trip keep in mind two things. Unless you have XM radio you can't expect the radio stations to carry you cross country. Bring along well known CD's you can sing along to. Heady, intellectual CD's aren't the best when what you really need is something to keep your spirits high.
- Those inexpensive FRS walkie talkies are great at rest stops for letting each person go their own way and keep track of them. I like the 5 mile FRS/GMRS Cobra Talkabouts better than the Motarola's because they sound so much better. The Motarola's sound like the adults on the Peanuts TV specials.
- Avoid excessive salt and excessive sugar. Try not to eat heavy meals that will bring your blood sugar down to the point of making you tired. Sugar will mess with your mood, salt will just make you feel icky, though soda (caffiene) was a staple, it takes a little while to kick in.
- I'm not an excessive over planner, in fact I could be accused of being quite the under planner, but at every state line, I made sure my co-pilot knew and explained clearly to me how to get through that state. Then I'd use the tripometer/odometer to estimate how far it would be to get places. "Okay, the turn off will be around 2,500 miles on the tripometer."
- Miles to go divided by miles per hour = hours to go. 60 miles at 60 miles an hour is 1 hour, 1,500 miles at 60 miles an hour is 25 hours. Plus 10 to 20 percent time at rest stops (typical rest stop is 10 to 20 minutes). Rests happen at a minimum every 300-400 miles for re-fueling.
- Bring something that will help you sleep so that when you have to drive, you're awake. Try to keep somewhat different schedules before and during the trip so that you're not all too tired at 4am to drive. I depend on melatonin and valerian root, and in the extreme, unisom (same active ingredient as nyquil), though unisom makes me groggy in the morning.
- Avoid sugar and caffiene before you're supposed to go to sleep.
- A compass that will work within the electrical field of the car is often useful (and often not, you'd be surprised at how many roads go east for a while when they're actually north roads).
- Gum. I don't know why, but sometimes keeping my jaw moving keeps me awake. Also, the sugarless kind lets me think I'm performing dental hygiene at the same time.
- Note the traffic radio stations for states/highways, they may come in handy when you hit traffic. "Is this going to last forever, or just the next couple of exits?"
- Hydration is a sticky subject... to be dehydrated, or to know you'll have to pull over to pee? Drink plenty of fluids the day before you set out, and drink slowly all the time rather than a lot at once. Your body purges water when you drink a lot all at once, but a little at a time over a long period of time will be put to more use.
- I haven't confirmed this, but one of those little portable TV's may be good. Video games are boring for everyone but the one who's playing (I guess those game link cables are good, but what about the driver?). The driver can listen to Friends, Oprah, the local auctions, and get some entertainment value too.
- The most important thing you can bring with you are flares and those little orange reflective triangle things. If you have to stop on the highway in the middle of the night and can't pull all the way over, flares could mean the difference between life and death. You basically want to do the "road work" thing and set them up so cars are gently directed around you. A reflective vest couldn't hurt either. Be sure they're handy too, you don't want to me rummaging around in your trunk for one for too long.
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