1.  Have your battery tested

 
When driving on a hot summer’s day, the last thing you want is for your battery to go dead during your journey. When hot temperatures arrive, your car’s battery may be working harder than average. 

To avoid breaking down, it’s best to get your battery tested by a local service centre for your peace of mind.

2.  Check your tyres

An excellent habit of getting into is checking your tyre pressures on a regular basis. Tyre pressure increases and decreases to mirror the change in temperature.

This can happen over the course of a day, a week, or even overnight. If any of your tyres are underinflated and have some damage, the higher temperatures will increase the chance of a puncture or blowout.

In addition, ensuring your tyre pressure is at an optimum level will help with fuel efficiency and prevent your tyres from wearing unevenly.

3.  Keep your vehicle waxed

During the summer months, ultraviolet sun rays can cause a car’s paintwork to fade, which can be costly to rectify. You can help prevent this sort of damage by applying car wax, as this creates an effective barrier between the outside elements and your vehicle’s paintwork. Think of car wax as being your vehicle’s own SP Factor 50.

Motorists can prevent this sort of damage by applying car wax. By creating a barrier between the paintwork and outside elements, the vehicle’s exterior will be less impacted by these damaging rays by reflecting them away.

Another benefit of applying car wax is that it helps to protect against bird lime, which is more frequent during the mating seasons of spring and summer. The clear wax coat will help to make the bird lime fall away from the paintwork and prevent the acid in the droppings from damaging the car.

4.  Looking after the interior of the car

When temperatures in the summer sometimes reach the late twenties or just over thirty degrees, your vehicle’s interior can become like an oven, especially if it has been exposed to direct sunlight for a period of time.

All of that heat inside the car will eventually damage the vehicle’s seats and dashboard.

These two particular components of a vehicle bear the brunt of the sunlight that is directed into your car or van. If possible, try to park your vehicle under a tree for shade, or another inexpensive option is to purchase a sunshade to go across the windscreen.

5.  Overheating

Increased temperatures can exacerbate cooling system issues, so it’s vital to check the coolant and cooling system regularly to avoid overheating.

For vehicles that are not fitted with stop-start technology, it’s worth turning off your engine when traffic is at a standstill.  Despite some popular beliefs, restarting your car engine will not use more fuel than if your engine had sat ‘idle’ for more than ten seconds.

6.  Avoid glare from the sun

The glare from the sun can impair a driver’s vision and is known to cause plenty of accidents on UK roads. Windscreens can get extremely dirty in dry weather, and marks can intensify the sun glare.

We would advise you to:

• Replace worn windscreen wipers
• Keep your windscreen washer fluid topped up to help you keep a clear view of the road in the sun
• Wear sunglasses and use overhead visors to help block out the glare from sunlight

7.  Keep cool

To help keep the driver and passengers cool during hot weather, it’s vital to ensure your air conditioning system is working properly. If you’re worried that the air-con isn’t working as efficiently as it used to, or it has been at least two to three years since you last had it checked, you should consider getting it recharged for the summer.

Although air conditioning systems don’t have a set service schedule, the majority of vehicle manufacturers recommend that you should service or re-gas your car’s air conditioning every one to two years.

While some air-con units can last for over five years, servicing the air-con system every couple of years will help extend the life of the costly components within it.

8.  Coping with hay fever

According to statistics provided by the NHS, there are over 10 million people in the UK who have to deal with hay fever – a condition that can cause issues for sufferers when driving.

If you feel you’re going to sneeze when driving, it’s best to slow down and drop back because, at 70mph, sneezing will cause you to lose your vision for up to 100 metres.

If you suffer badly from hay fever, you might want to consider the following:

• Close air vents and windows to decrease pollen grains in the vehicle
• If you take medication for your hay fever, it’s worth checking if it causes side effects such as drowsiness or blurred vision before shortly setting off on a journey
• Wear sunglasses to block out extreme sunlight
• Have tissues close to hand
• If needs be, have someone else drive
• Have carpets and mats cleaned on a regular basis to get rid of dust

9.  Keep hydrated

It’s always worth taking plenty of cold water with you before you head out on a longer journey, as this will help keep you and your passengers hydrated, especially if you’re unfortunate enough to get caught up in a long traffic jam.

Purchasing insulated drinks bottles is an excellent way of keeping a source of cold water in the car and is much needed for your kids or dogs if they have had a long day of adventure and exercise.

10.  Feeling tired

During the summer months, warmer temperatures causes many people to get less sleep than they are used to, and as a result they are more tired when they hit the road. 

Some modern cars are now equipped with sophisticated eye-tracking technology that detects when drivers are feeling tired and fatigued and warns them to take a break.  If a vehicle isn’t fitted with this technology, a driver may not always be aware of just how tired they are.

Some of the signs of a tired driver include:

• Having trouble keeping their head up
• Drifting from their lane or driving over rumble strips
• Feeling irritable and restless
• Repeatedly yawning, rubbing eyes and heavy eyelids
• Having problems with focusing, and perhaps even daydreaming
• Having trouble with remembering the last few miles driven

The effects of driving when fatigued can be life-changing, as one study found that one in six collisions resulting in death or injury was a cause of a motorist being tired.

Here are some tips to stay safe:

• On long journeys, aim to stop every couple of hours or so. The road safety charity, Brake, refers to research that shows that after two hours of continuous driving, you have less ability to concentrate and also have slower reaction times to hazards
• Try not to drive for more than eight hours in a day
• If possible, try to avoid driving at times when you would normally be asleep. Between midnight and 6am your body clock will probably be telling you that you need to sleep
• Check any medication you take before you drive to ensure it doesn’t cause drowsiness
• Drinking caffeine can help improve your alertness, but please remember that the caffeine kick will only last a short amount of time
• Try to avoid eating a big meal before taking to the road, as that can make you feel drowsy
• Take another driver with you, so that on long trips you can take it in turns to drive – preferably changing the driver over every two hours
• Try to get a good 7 to 8 hours sleep before driving
• If you detect that you’re becoming tired when driving, pull over somewhere safe at the first opportunity and take a 20-minute break