UK Car Essentials – What do you need to keep in your car?

Owning a car can be an expensive thing to do. With many cars, something new seems to go wrong every month. You can’t always predict what is likely to go wrong, but you can prepare yourself and the car for when it does. Keeping a few car essentials in your vehicle can help you be ready for most eventualities.

Spares

One of the hardest things to predict is the easiest thing to prepare for. If you get a puncture, or your tyre bursts entirely, you could be left stranded for a long time on the side of the road. Preparing for any eventualities gives you the confidence that you will be ready if the time comes.

Many cars come with a spare tyre, or with a tyre repair kit. However, you should not assume that your spare is suitable, or will even fit your car. Familiarise yourself with how to change a tyre, or with how to use your repair kit. Make sure that you also have all of the appropriate kit you need. If you need a tyre jack, then ensure that you have the correct equipment.

Gauges

You can’t always predict a flat tyre. However, you can prepare your tyres, and try to keep them in a state that lessens the risk of getting a flat tyre. Essential to this is keeping your tyres correctly inflated. Keeping your tyres either too inflated or not inflated enough can cause damage.

Make sure that you keep a tyre pressure gauge / foot pump in your car. Somewhere on your car, usually inside the door, your car is likely to have a sticker indicating the correct pressure levels. Keep your tyres at the right level of pressure, and you could reduce your chances of needing the spare.

Manual

It can be tempting to assume that you can look up anything you need to know on your phone. After all, a quick Google search always seems to turn up the answers you are looking for. However, this is not always the case. If something goes wrong with your car, a Google search will often not show up the answer you need. Equally, if you are in a remote area, or your phone is out of battery, you might not even be able to access the internet.

If you keep your car’s manual with you in the car, you will always have access to the answers you need. Sometimes the oldest ways of solving problems are still the best.

Breakdown

If you break down, you need to be prepared. While you are unlikely to break down, you can prepare to make the process easier, in case you do. There are not the same regulations about breaking down in the UK that there are in some other European countries. However, while they are not regulations, it is often worth following the same guidelines.

Wearing a Hi-Vis jacket when you break down can be the difference between another motorist seeing you in advance, and you having a serious accident. Equally, warning triangles can alert approaching traffic that you have broken down ahead.

Atlas

Satellite Navigation seems to have entirely defeated the traditional paper map. After all, how often do you break out the road atlas when you are trying to plot a route? However, using your phone or a sat nav system is not always possible. If you get caught out in the countryside and you have no signal, or you run out of power, technology might not be the best way out of your difficulty.

Keeping a traditional paper Road Atlas in your car doesn’t take up much space. However, an atlas can help you out regardless of where you are – and it never runs out of battery.

Insurance

You cannot prepare for everything. No matter how many car essentials you have prepared, sometimes you are going to have an accident, and there isn’t much you can do about it. That’s where your insurance comes in. While you are only required to have third party insurance, it is always worth having a higher level of cover. Short term car insurance from GoShorty is fully comprehensive. That means that if you have an accident, your insurance will cover damage that your car suffers.

Temporary car insurance from GoShorty can cover you from 1 hour to 28 days. That means that you only need to get cover for the time that you need, and not waste money insuring a car when you don’t need it.

Get a temporary insurance quote today, and see how much you could save.