No kidding, there I was, driving down the “green tunnel” near Savannah, GA, when I see a car pulled over by the side of the road. Now, since it is dark, and they have no light, I pull up behind them give them the headlights. It was just a blown tire, but they had no light and had no clue how to get the spare tire (or even if the car had a spare tire, I think). In the end, it was a rental so they called the rental company. They were not prepared.
Now, I will excuse them a bit – I’m not paranoid enough to carry around an emergency kit for the occasional rental car. But what do you have in the cars you drive several thousand miles a year in? Do you really need to pay $60+ a year to have the roadside assistance coverage, when most problems you can take care of yourself? With your car emergency kit you can feel confident dropping the coverage AND be better prepared to begin with.
Now, there are only four things I think you MUST have to be prepared for most situations, the minimum kit.
MINIMUM kit:
• Headlamp
• Multi-tool
• Reflective belt/vest
• Chemlites
Headlamp, because these things always seem to happen at night.
Multi-tool, because you will use it for everything else even when the car isn’t broken down, and you can use it when it does.
Reflective belt because you don’t want to get run down when you have to leg it for help.
Chemlites because there is no burnination involved and they last longer than 20-30 minutes.
Combining your minimum kit with preparation, it will take care of most situations you will encounter. What kind of preparation am I referring to?
1. Keeping your car’s manual in the car
2. Rehearsing a tire change
I am not saying go all wacko with this tire change rehearsal here. There is no need to do it in the rain a 11pm on the side of the interstate. Just know where your spare is, where your car jack and tools are, and how to get to them. How to get the spare out of its “inconvenient”, shall we say, location. And if you do this in daylight it will take you 5 minutes, and you will know what you need, where it is, and it won’t be a crisis when you discover your spare is not inflated. Or sitting in 4 inches of water in the base of your trunk. (yes that was me)
With four easy to find items you can greatly increase your preparedness for the things Murphy drives your way. Is this all you should have? Not at all, but I think this is the minimum. I’ll talk about what else you need to put in after you get these four items stowed.
-BattleBlue1
