Preparing For Car Emergencies

Posted on: 29 July 2015

Whether you're on a vacation across the country or driving to a distant job offer, being stranded can ruin a potentially beautiful trip. Even with proper maintenance and spare tires, you could still find yourself stranded too far away for friends and family to give you a ride. Before heading out on your trip, keep a few preparation techniques in mind to make being stranded a bit less terrible.

Stock Up On Backup Power

The car has become an entertainment station for the driver as well as the passengers. Although you shouldn't allow yourself to be distracted from driving, it's understandable to get a peek at your phone at a rest area and certainly at a hotel. That entertainment can help lower stress and find help in the event of a breakdown. 

Modern smartphones boast great battery life, but can still sap away at valuable talk time if there's a lot of background processes; an issue that you may not have the technical skill to deal with. As long as your phone has a replaceable battery, there is something that you could do.

Purchase additional batteries for your phone ahead of time and charge them ahead of time. Keep the charging dock and batteries with you in an area safe from the sun to avoid damage from the heat, and be prepared to put in a new battery if the power runs out on the first battery.

With enough backups in place, you can contact emergency assistance companies like Big D Towing while looking up your location information. If it'll take a long time for towing services to arrive, you can look up places to eat and stay, ask friends or relatives to transfer money to help with the emergency and plan your next steps after towing.

Know Your Communications Blind Spots

There are some areas that still don't have cell phone coverage. Although these areas are becoming smaller, you need to be aware of blind spots.

Communications blind spots occur when there is no cell phone tower in the area. Contrary to popular belief, your phone isn't contacting with satellites that cover the entire earth or a similarly large area; specific satellite ground sites communicate with the satellite, then distribute the signal to towers. If there's no tower in the area, you could break down with no way to contact assistance.

Fortunately, the Global Positioning System can give you an idea of where you are, as GPS radios on phones can communicate with large, broadcast signals from GPS satellites as long as you aren't blocked by bridges, mountains or even your car. Make sure to review maps of service areas to knew when you may be driving through an outage area and how far you need to go for a signal.

When you're within the signal area, your first call should be to a towing service that is ready to pick you up and return you to civilization. Get a reliable towing service saved in your phone and written down to reduce the stress and dangers of being stranded.