From Richmond to Timbuktu, good brakes on your car, truck or SUV give you better odds to avoid an accident

Think of all the cars, trucks and SUVs out there you can hit with your vehicle when pulling out of your Richmond driveway should your brakes fail. It’s a target-rich environment. Of course, who wants to hit anything with your car, truck or SUV?

Hitting things with your vehicle is the kind of thing most of us prefer to avoid. From Richmond to Timbuktu, accidents happen all the time. We all prefer they don’t happen to us or our loved ones.

One way to avoid accidents is to drive safely and pay attention to the road. Many accidents occur because someone took their eyes off the road for a moment just as something happened that would require them to react.

A child chases a ball into the street. The person in the car, truck or SUV in front of you almost missed their turn and decided to hit their brakes rather than go around and come back to their route. A deer runs across the road. A box falls off a truck in front of you. A car speeding in the other direction loses control and comes into your lane.

These are just a few of the scenarios that could require you to react quickly to avoid an accident.

Let’s suppose that, as a responsible driver, you are strictly focused on your driving 99% of the time. If you put as many miles on your vehicle as the average driver does (14,263 miles, according to the Federal Highway Administration). A reasonable estimate is that a person putting on these many miles will average about 40 mph and drive for about one hour per day.

For someone who is strictly focused on their driving 99% of the time, driving one hour per day, they are strictly focused on their driving for 59.4 minutes each day. But, 0.6 minutes they are admittedly distracted.

Anyone who has driven for any amount of time knows that there will be occasions when they have to turn, increase speed and/or brake suddenly to avoid an accident or something in the road. It is simply inevitable. Now, if you apply the law of averages, if a child, a deer, a box, another vehicle or any number of other objects suddenly fall into your path while driving, we all hope that it doesn’t happen during that 0.6 minutes when you’re distracted.

Drive long enough and the odds that the unfortunate timing of a potential accident with a distracted driver will occur increases. One thing you do to mitigate this problem is to reduce the amount of time you are distracted while driving, preferably to zero.

Don’t text, turn your head to tell the kids to behave or look at something a passenger is trying to show you. You’re driving – drive.

Another thing you can do to improve your odds in these situations is to make sure your vehicle is in optimal operating condition. And, for the sake of safe driving, this includes good tires, suspension, steering and begins with good brakes.

You want to be able to brake quickly when the need arises. Should you look away from the road just before a child runs into the street, if you have good brakes, you may still have a chance to avoid an accident. If your brakes are not up to par, the odds are growing long against you and that kid in the street, whether you’re in Richmond or somewhere between there and Timbuktu.

Is your antifreeze safe from freezing this Richmond winter

You still have time to have it checked Well, there’s no denying it – winter tends to get chilly here in Richmond. We have to deal with snow and ice on the roads, scraping the same off our windows and windshield, and staying warm while we drive. Of course, you had your antifreeze checked before winter rolled into town. What?! You didn’t have your antifreeze checked before winter clamped down on Richmond? So, how’s your antifreeze doing? If you haven’t had it checked, there’s really no way of knowing, is there? This car has overheated in the middle of a Richmond winter. But, on the other end of the spectrum, the antifreeze can also freeze if it's not up to its job. Hopefully, you haven’t had a serious problem with your antifreeze already. If you did, you’d probably know. When antifreeze fails, it’s a potentially catastrophic condition for your vehicle’s engine. You could have hoses that have burst because of freezing antifreeze. Worse than that, your engine block may have crac...

Blocks of ice falling from cars in McHenry could cause accidents or damage

We’ve all seen those blocks of snow falling from behind the rear tires of a car when the snow rolls into McHenry . Fortunately, they’re just packed snow that will disintegrate under your vehicle’s tires as you simply drive right through them, right? Don’t count on it. Those blocks of snow are often packed so tight, condensed by the thaw-and-freeze cycle, that they’re anything but oversized snowballs . They’re often more like boulders. Hit one of those blocks and the collision between the block and one of your tires could send you careening off the road or into oncoming traffic. In some cases, they’re so solid you could pound them with a sledgehammer with little effect. They truly can represent a serious road hazard. The problem is that it’s difficult to tell how solidly they’re packed when you see them on the road, left their unwittingly by another driver. Either way, your best bet is to try to avoid them. But you want to be careful dodging blocks of ice in the road, too. You need...

October 20 Hootenanny will benefit veterans with PTSD

Been to a Hootenanny lately? When you read that question did you ask, “What?” Well, if you have gone to a Hootenanny in a while, or if you don’t know what a hootenanny is, we have an event for Oct. 20 that will clear up either question. From 6 p.m. to Midnight, Saturday, Oct. 20, MC3, the McHenry Area Chamber of Commerce business networking group, is helping to host an inaugural Veterans R&R Wild Horse Hootenanny at Beyond Stable Farm (11129 Rte. 176, Woodstock). The event will benefit Veterans R&R Operation Wild Horse. Operation Wild Horse serves veterans with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Working with the horses has proven to have an incredibly calming effect on the veterans. And, it’s good for the horses, too, rescued wild mustangs. This means that the hootenanny is for a very good cause. But, it’s also a lot of fun. So, what is a hootenanny? According to a Google search, a hootenanny is “an informal gathering with folk music and sometimes dancing.” The V...

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