Your In-Car Emergency Kit

June 16th, 2023

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Winter is a difficult time to drive in, as conditions make things more dangerous.  Depending on where in the country you are, you may have to cope with a lower angle of the sun, which gets in your eyes and dazzles you as well as showing up every single smear and speck of dirt on the windscreen.  You may have to cope with more rain, or even frost and snow, and you may have to cope with darker mornings and evenings.  Of course, this will vary, depending on how far north, south or inland you live.  Accidents become a lot more common.

Even outside winter, the unexpected can happen.  It’s not just accidents that happen, either.  So do breakdowns.  To misquote Eeyore from Winnie-The-Pooh, the thing about accidents is that you never know you’re going to have them until you’re having them.  However, we can be prepared for emergencies – even if all we have to do is to sit tight and wait until the breakdown service arrives (and hopefully not the ambulance and police). 

In these situations, it’s wise to have an emergency kit stashed in your car to help you cope with most situations.  Many car manufacturers will provide you with an emergency triangle and some have a first aid kit as an accessory.  You will probably need more than this to cope with an emergency; however, it’s probably not a good idea to have too big an emergency kit because if you carry too much weight around in your vehicle, you’ll end up reducing your fuel efficiency (and won’t have as much space for luggage as you had hoped when you first bought the car).

What I’d recommend as a good in-car emergency kit to see you through breakdowns and similar emergencies, either rural or urban, would include the following:

• A mobile phone with plenty of charge.  This will allow you to send for help, and most modern phones also include a torch as well, which is handy if it’s dark.  However, you probably carry that with you most of the time anyway.
• A Swiss Army knife and/or multi-tool.  I’ve been mocked for carrying one of these in my handbag – until someone needs a knife or screwdriver.
• A first aid kit. This should contain bandages, sticking plasters of various sizes, antiseptic cream, scissors, tweezers, painkillers (paracetamol, aspirin or ibuprofen) and any medication that you use on a regular basis (e.g., insulin, Epi-pens or antihistamines). Plastic gloves and cotton swabs are also good to include.
• Water.  This can either be for you to stop you from becoming dehydrated, or you can use it to top up a radiator.
• A jacket. If it’s a cold, wet night and you’ve had to turn the engine off (or your EV has run out of battery) in the middle of nowhere, you will need to keep warm somehow.
• A jack and other tyre-changing tools. These usually come with the car.
• A small shovel. You won’t need one of these if the only driving you do is urban or on well-maintained roads. However, if you head out on rural roads or places where things can get a bit rugged, a shovel can really come in handy.
• A fire extinguisher.  If you have an EV, make sure you have the right sort of fire extinguisher, as not every type works on EV battery fires (known as thermal runaway).  These fires, unlike fires in ICE vehicles, don’t require oxygen, so the trick of starving them of oxygen with foam won’t work.
• Snacks. If you get hangry, everything will seem worse, so having something to keep your blood sugar levels topped up while you wait for the breakdown services will keep tempers from running hotter than they already are.  It’s probably best to make sure that these aren’t too sugary, though, to avoid sugar highs or boom-and-bust insulin levels. Think nuts and muesli bars rather than my mother-in-law’s favourite (barley sugars).

Some other items that you could add to your emergency kit could be the following:

• High-viz gear with reflective strips. This is useful if you have to change a tyre in the middle of the night.
• Rope. You may have to tow or be towed at some point.  In the words of JRR Tolkien, “Never travel far without a rope!”.
• Reading material. Sometimes, you may have to wait for the breakdown services for a very long time.  You could use your phone to stop yourself from getting too fidgety, but in an emergency, it’s best to conserve the battery.  Reading the map and/or the driver’s manual gets old very quickly.
• Jumper leads.
• LED torch. Sometimes, your phone is awkward to hold and direct to the right place, or you may not have much charge.
• A strong magnet on a string. This is useful for retrieving bits of steel or iron (e.g., screws, nuts and bolts) that have fallen somewhere awkward.  (In a moment of irony, I was interrupted while writing this article to help the amateur car mechanic in my life do precisely this.)

These items don’t have to be kept all in the same place in your car – you might have the jacket in the boot, the jack with the spare tyre, the muesli bars in the glovebox and the first aid kit under a seat.  Some items might live more or less permanently in your handbag, man bag, briefcase, backpack, jacket pocket or whatever you use to cart about your keys, phone and wallet.

The most important thing in your in-car emergency kit is you, so make sure that you stay alert and use your common sense.  That might help you stay out of an emergency in the first place.