Driving a Car!

Buddies, here are some tips to drive your car during rain:

slow down! It takes longer to stop or adjust in wet weather.

Stay toward the middle lanes - water tends to pool in the outside lanes.

Maintain proper following distance (3 Second Rule). This needs to be increased in wet weather.

Drive in the tracks of a car ahead of you.

Don't follow large trucks or buses too closely. The spray created by their large tires reduces your vision. Take care when passing them as well; if you must pass, do so quickly and safely.

Be more alert when driving in wet or slippery conditions. Watch out for brake lights in front of you.

Avoid using your brakes; if possible, take your foot off the accelerator to slow down.
Turn your headlights on even in a light rain, or in gloomy, foggy or overcast conditions. Not only do they help you see the road, but they'll help other drivers see you. If your car has daytime running lights you still should put them on, so vehicles behind you can see you better.
Before it starts to rain, replace old or brittle wipers.

Avoid off-road driving: it's hard to judge the actual depth of puddles and you can easily become stuck.

Never drive beyond the limits of visibility. At night rainy roads become especially treacherous.

The glare of oncoming lights, amplified by the rain on your windscreen, can cause temporary loss of visibility while substantially increasing driver fatigue. In rainy conditions pedestrians, livestock, and wildlife are extremely hard to spot and even harder to avoid.

Never drive through moving water if you can't see the ground through it; your car could be
swept off the road.

When driving through a puddle of uncertain depth, go slow. If it's deeper than the bottom of your doors, turn around and find another route. Deep water can cause serious damage to a modern car's electrical system.

Avoid splashing pedestrians.

Be Safe!

A note on weather

Weather lesson plans may be put away for the summer, but many teachers take the time in the summer to gather resources for the upcoming school year. If you are not a year-round school, you likely are already more than 1/3 done with your summer vacation. Here, I present a weather lesson on using weather maps. Students will investigate weather map symbols and their use in creating forecasts. Ultimately, students will produce a mock forecast.

The trick to this lesson is that the teacher needs to do just a bit of prep for the assessment by gathering weather reports from a newspaper 5 days before the lesson begins. Students use these, with the dates removed, to build up to their assessment activity (making a mock forecast). As students present their forecasts, the class can vote for who they think has the most accurate forecast. The beauty is that, if all goes well, the weather the day of the assessment presentations will be the answer. Gathering the weather prior to the assignment means that the teacher only needs to check the daily newspaper and look outside to see how accurate the mock forecasts are! Go to the Mock Forecast Lesson Plan now.