Philadelphia winter: the five things that strand drivers most

Every winter our phone rings for the same five reasons. None of them are surprising and most of them are avoidable, which is the frustrating part. Here they are in the order we see them.

1. Batteries

Cold does not kill a good battery, it exposes a tired one. A battery that has been slow to crank since October is the one that will not turn over on the first properly cold morning. Most batteries give three to five years. If yours is older than that and cranking slowly, replace it before it strands you rather than after.

2. Tyres

Pressure drops roughly one pound for every ten degrees the temperature falls, so a tyre that was fine in October is soft in January. Soft tyres wear badly, handle worse and are far more likely to fail on a pothole. Philadelphia produces a lot of potholes.

3. Coolant

Coolant that is too weak can freeze, and frozen coolant does not circulate. That turns into an overheated engine within a few miles of starting, which is a far bigger repair than a coolant flush.

4. Wipers and washer fluid

Summer washer fluid freezes on the screen and blinds you at the worst possible moment. Blades that were merely poor in autumn become useless against road salt. This is the cheapest item on this list and the one that most directly affects whether you can see.

5. Brakes

Road salt accelerates corrosion on lines, callipers and rotors. Brakes that were marginal going into winter come out of it worse, and stopping distances on cold wet roads are already longer.

The short version

A battery test, a pressure check, a coolant check and a set of blades is a small job that prevents most winter call-outs. Book it before the first hard freeze rather than after, and if the car does strand you anyway, the tow line runs 24 hours.