Whether you deal with it almost everyday, or once in a blue moon, you and your teen are going to have to deal with driving in some heavy rain. There are a lot of issues that come with driving in inclement weather, especially rain, and we cover it all in Driver Ed in a Box®. Today, though, I’m going to talk to you about hydroplaning in particular.
First of all, what is hydroplaning? The name sort of sounds like some kind of new extreme sport. Actually, hydroplaning is when the tires of your vehicle actually ride up on the water in the road and are no longer touching the pavement. That sounds pretty scary, but it’s actually pretty common anytime you’re travelling at high speeds on a rainy road.
Hydroplaning becomes dangerous when you try stop or change direction suddenly. Your tires are not actually touching the pavement and so you have no traction to be able to do either of those things. If you were trying to avoid hitting something by stopping suddenly or swerving out of the way, you’re going to hit it if you were hydroplaning, or lose control of the vehicle.
So how do you deal with hydroplaning? It’s actually real easy. Just increase your following distance. Give yourself more time to slow down if you have to stop. All it takes to stop hydroplaning and make contact with the pavement is to decrease your speed a little bit. Just take your foot off the accelerator and let the vehicle slow a bit on its own so your tires can re-establish contact with the road before you apply the brake. It’s just a good idea to keep a good 4 to 6 second following distance (personally, I prefer 6 to 10 seconds – okay, I’m an old guy) in the rain (or any inclement weather conditions).
Watch this video to see me, Patrick Barrett, the Driver Education Guru, talk more about hydroplaning.