Rain Driving Survival

In a lot of regions of the country, rain driving is an unavoidable part of getting around. You either learn to deal with it, or else you spend massive amounts of time stranded at home, staring at rain-spattered windows with baleful eyes. In drier regions of the country, it's possible to drive for years and get little experience in the wet. In either case, wet-weather smarts can make you a safer driver and reduce your stress level when the drops begin to fall.


Rain introduces a variety of dangerous factors to driving: visibility is reduced, traction between your tires and the road is reduced and your car handles with much less of its dry-road predictability. So even though you might be cruising along serenely at highway speed in an apparently harmless shower, your normal safety margins are cut by an unknowable amount. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Why So Slippery?
Your car needs traction to accelerate, turn or stop. Your tires develop their maximum traction on clean, dry pavement. Add contaminants such as dirt, ice, snow or water and grip is reduced. The way your car responds to wet pavement can be affected by many factors. The texture of the pavement can make a huge difference in the grip that's available. Pavement with a lot of "tooth" can offer surprising traction when wet, as long as you're not driving through standing water. Road surfaces worn smooth by years of use offer much less grip in the same weather conditions. Steel bridge grates, manhole covers and paint stripes are notoriously slick when wet.


Intersections, entry and exit ramps, toll plazas and other high-traffic/low-speed areas collect a lot of slippery, spilled fluids from vehicles. The first rain after a long dry spell can be particularly treacherous as all these juices combine with light rainfall to make a low-grip soup.

Water Between You & The Road
Besides pavement condition, the type and condition of your tires come heavily into play when precipitation falls. All-season tires have generous grooves and sipes in the tread surface to allow water to escape, while wide summer performance tires have comparatively small grooves and large areas of uninterrupted tread. Worn tires of any type have shallow groves that limit water dispersal.