STOP! if you can – good brakes are essential on McHenry’s winter roads, even if winter has officially ended

Think about what brakes do, even on a dry road. Now consider what you ask of them on a slippery McHenry road in winter. We demand a lot from the brakes on our cars.

According to Autolist, an automotive shopping sight on the internet, in 2021, the average car weighed 4,094 pounds. That’s just over two tons. The additional weight of items you have in your car, as well as yourself, mean that you’re often moving an object of considerable heft down McHenry roads at rapid rates of speed. Can you stop?

Another site on the Internet, Omnicalculator, provides formulas that can show you how much room you’ll need in order to stop.

There are two problems with this chart. One is that it doesn’t take into account the weight of the vehicle that is stopping. If you have a smaller car, you may be able to stop in a shorter distance.

It also doesn’t consider that often prevalent road condition during McHenry winters – slippery roads. The lower chart shows stopping on wet roads. But, if you drive around these parts, this time of year, you know that there is often snow and/or ice on the road.

Stopping on wet roads will seriously increase your braking distance over dry roads, as the charts demonstrate. But there’s a big difference between stopping on some water and stopping on a road covered with snow or ice. If those distances increase substantially with speed on a wet road, just think how the braking distance can grow when slippery conditions are a problem.

At 70 mph on a wet road, you need almost three football fields to stop your car, assuming your perception and reaction time is as good as 2.5 seconds. What happens at night when your perception time is liable to increase because of the dark.

Then there’s another potential factor that the chart fails to consider – the condition of your brakes. If your brakes are in good condition as, no doubt, Omnicalculator assumes, these are reasonable braking distances. But, if your brakes are not up to speed, you can increase the braking distance significantly.

After all, one a wet, dry or slippery McHenry road, you’re asking your brakes to bring approximately two tons of vehicle and loved ones to a safe and judicious stop as quickly as possible.

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