Road conditions: driving in rain
Driving in rain is something that you can be sure you will experience regularly once you are an actual driver, although depending where you live and the time of year you learnt, you might have experienced it surprisingly little whilst you were learning to drive.
Now, when it comes to driving in the rain, braking is most clearly affected. Indeed if you have to break quickly it can take twice or longer for you to be able to stop the car. The reason for this is that the grip of the tyres on the road surface is less effective when it is wet, and so in addition the wheels can lock up.
This means that you should brake less strongly than you would in ordinary road conditions, and pro rata you should adjust your speed to the road conditions and go more slowly in rain than you normally would.
If there are any visibility issues at all from the rain even if it is light, then as a first step you should use your headlights on dipped. And make sure the windscreen is always clean: some learners have never actually needed to put the wipers on until they have passed their test, and indeed to squirt the windscreen also to clean it.
Sometimes you might have to drive through water on the road, such as a ford.
Common sense tells you to look for the shallowest point in it, as far as you can tell, and indeed that is what you should do, before driving through it slowly. When doing so you should select first gear and keeping the engine speed relatively high so that you do not risk stalling.
It is recommended that whenever you've been through water like that you then test the brakes afterwards to ensure that they are not affected: to do this simply drive slowly with one foot on the accelerator on the other pressing gently on the brake. This will let you test that the brakes are still working well.
Related Articles...
Medical rules and driving
There are a wide range of conditions that you can hold and still be a safe driver. However there are certain conditions that will may impact on your ability to be a safe driver and therefore could...
Mock Driving Theory Test
Many learner drivers are in the process of finishing A-levels or at university, and so the process of exams and tests is very familiar to you. For those that tests and exams are a distant memory, a...
Your driving licence: getting it back
As the New Drivers Act article outlines, if you get six penalty points or more in the first two years of having a licence, then it is revoked and you have to retake both tests: the theory and the...
The Driving Standards Agency
The Driving Standards Agency has a website at www.dsa.gov.uk.
They are an executive agency within the Department for Transport in the UK.
They deliver tests for theory and practical...
Some common engine faults
It is beyond the scope of the articles here to go into detail about how the engine works and what the various parts of it are. For the theory test you won't need to know a great detail about the...
What's the point of the theory test?
The official theory test is a relatively recent addition to the driving test, and has evolved and become more comprehensive over time. For many of us who ask our parents about the driving test,...
Risk factors when driving: snow and ice
When the snow is falling, there is one big problem - it is hard to see far infront. So like fog, reduced visibility is the problem with snow. And when there is heavy snowfall it can be very hard...
Being aware of potential hazards
Having the maximum time possible to react to hazards is important and can be the difference between an awkward situation or even an accident and continuing safe driving.
This requires you not...
Driving Theory Test
Until relatively recently in driving history, there was no theory test. From the time the first person passed a driving test in the UK in 1935 through to 1996, there was no separate theory test. ...
Your legal obligations as a driver
There are some basics that everyone knows when it comes to being able to behind the wheel of a vehicle. These are of course meeting the legal eyesight requirements, being older than the minimum age...
Back to home page of driving theory test questions
