DRIVING ON SNOW: OUR 5 SAFETY TIPS
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Peugeot & Moi
1 February
10 minute read
Before you hit the road, you can anticipate and prepare your journey by taking a few simple but very useful steps:
At the start of winter, take the time to service your vehicle so that you are not caught short when you hit the road in snowy conditions. Here are some important things to check:
Electric cars are more sensitive to low temperatures, especially in terms of range. This is because, whereas a combustion engine car generates a lot of waste heat, electric vehicle motors convert almost all the energy produced to propel the vehicle without loss. If you are travelling with an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle, here are some specific tips to help you maximise battery life:
Electric cars are more sensitive to low temperatures, especially in terms of range. This is because, whereas a combustion engine car generates a lot of waste heat, electric vehicle motors convert almost all the energy produced to propel the vehicle without loss. If you are travelling with an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle, here are some specific tips to help you maximise battery life:
Before a trip on a snowy route, it is essential to have a minimum of equipment to deal with the weather:
Before a trip on a snowy route, it is essential to have a minimum of equipment to deal with the weather:
Chains and snow socks
Chains or snow socks may sometimes be compulsory for driving in the mountains or in the event of heavy snowfall. Depending on the country, legislation sometimes requires all vehicles to be fitted with special equipment for driving on certain parts of the road network.
In any case, for your safety, chains or socks are imperative if you are planning to go to the mountains but do not wish to invest in snow tyres.
Do not choose your chains lightly and consider the following criteria:
Snow tyres
Winter tyres offer incredible safety and are very effective on snow.
For occasional driving, the question does not arise, but if you are a regular visitor to the mountains, having a full set of winter tyres is an investment, but one that will quickly pay off.
Snow has a low grip coefficient and therefore requires a high degree of safety and anticipation. The main danger remains ice or black ice, which offers almost no grip. Moreover, black ice is sneaky and can be masked on a very light layer of powder.
On snow, it is therefore important never to speed up, even if the driving sensation and the reactions of your car are good.
"I am a PEUGEOT agent in the Ain region and, in addition to selling and repairing cars, I am lucky enough to be able to race cars. I have done quite a few championships for the PEUGEOT brand in promotional formulas and I have specialised in ice racing.
At the beginning, I was a driver for a team and with time, I set up my own team. We designed and built our own car based on a 208. I race every weekend against monuments of motor sport like Sébastien Loeb or Yvan Muller. So we started as an amateur team that became professional and today we have reached a level of performance to compete against the best drivers in the discipline."
"I am a PEUGEOT agent in the Ain region and, in addition to selling and repairing cars, I am lucky enough to be able to race cars. I have done quite a few championships for the PEUGEOT brand in promotional formulas and I have specialised in ice racing.
At the beginning, I was a driver for a team and with time, I set up my own team. We designed and built our own car based on a 208. I race every weekend against monuments of motor sport like Sébastien Loeb or Yvan Muller. So we started as an amateur team that became professional and today we have reached a level of performance to compete against the best drivers in the discipline."
Tyres
You can have the best driver in the world, but if they don't have the right tyres, they won't move forward or be able to turn at the end of the straight. So the most important thing is the tyre and the grip.
We run on studded tyres (250 studs per tyre). As a tyre heats up, it expands and as it expands, it lets the studs out of its housing a little. For us, the difficulty is to make the tyre work in a certain way to create the best grip. Our performance depends to a large extent on the tyres. In my team, we are 14 people and 2 of them are exclusively dedicated to tyres. These people analyse, measure and test the tyres in order to constantly improve performance.
Weight distribution
Weight distribution allows the weight to be centred in the middle of the vehicle to cancel out the effect of inertia. You should know that each time you win a race, you take what is called ballast for the next race. So the first one takes 60 kg, the second one 40 kg and the third one 20 kg. So, if we are ranked in the top three, we have to rework all the settings in the workshop before the next race, depending on the ballast.
We work a lot beforehand to anticipate all this and we also gain valuable experience over time.
You have to know that, whatever happens, it is overspeed that will create the accident. Whether you are on ice, snow or even tarmac, the laws of physics mean that if you drive slowly, if you anticipate things, there will never be an accident. Accidents happen if you drive too fast or if you are not prepared enough, whatever the surface. As far as driving on ice is concerned, even if you have great nails, if you go out, it's because you were too fast compared to what the car can take.
You have to be able to measure the grip and some people have this instinctively, others do not. Hence the importance of starting off slowly.
For driving on snow, the narrower the tyres, the less risk of skidding because the ground surface is smaller. Moreover, old vehicles such as the 2CV or the 4L did not need snow tyres to drive on snow because the original tyres were much narrower than today.