3 Tips For Safely Road Tripping Throughout The Night

For many roadtrippers, it truly makes the most sense to go a large portion of your driving at night. Especially if you have kids with you, driving while they’re sleeping can make your whole trip a lot more manageable. Additionally, driving at night also often means that you’ll miss a lot of traffic that otherwise might be littering the roads during the day. However, driving at night also comes with its own set of risks. So to help ensure that you don’t wind up in a car accident during your travels, here are three tips for safe road tripping throughout the night.

Make Sure You Can See Clearly

Before you hit the road in the dark, it’s vital that you’ve taken every precaution to ensure that you’ll be able to see clearly regardless of how much external light is shining around you. To help you with this, idrivesafely.com advises that you clean both your windshield and your lights before you take off. By cleaning your windshield with something like a newspaper, you ensure that you won’t get any glare that could make it difficult for you to see clearly into the night. And when you take the time to clean off your lights, you’ll also be able to see if they’re pointed correctly.

Keep The Inside Of Your Car Dark

While you want it to be light enough around or in front of your car so you can see where you’re going, you want the opposite to be happening inside of your vehicle. Having light inside your car can not only be distracting to you as the driver, but it can also make it a lot harder for your eyes to see what’s going on in front of and around your vehicle. Because of this, you should encourage your passengers to keep the lights off inside and dim their screens if they’re using devices. Also, according to Phil Berg and Anthony Alaniz, contributors to Popular Mechanics, you should adjust your dashboard so all those lights are dimmer as well.

Know How To Fight Fatigue

One of the biggest risks you need to be aware of when driving, especially at night, is fatigue. According to the National Safety Council, 37 percent of adults have said that they’ve fallen asleep behind the wheel before. While this statistic is scary, there are things you can do to ensure that you don’t drive when you’re too tired. Some of the best rules you can follow to keep yourself from being a drowsy driver are to get a good night’s rest the night before you’re driving, not drive if you’ve been away for more than 16 hours, and stop every two hours so you can rest and revive your energy.

If you’re going to be spending part of your road trip traveling at night, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you stay safe out there on the road.