Car or Truck Broke Down on The Side of The Road Use These Roadside Safety Tips

Have you ever broken down? Well, I'm professional at breaking down. I break down all the time. Hey, babe. I broke down again. Hey, boss, I'm gonna be late today. Hey, bro. I just ran out of gas. Can you come get me?

No.

In this video, we're gonna talk about how to break down safely. When your vehicle is breaking down, you're not gonna have much time to think about this. So you want to prepare before. If you're losing control of the vehicle, whether you're losing brakes or steering, you wanna pull over to the side of the road as safe as possible. If your vehicle is smoking, pull off to the side of the road and exit the vehicle as quickly as possible. Remember to put your hazards on. While you're sitting in the vehicle on the side of the road, you wanna make sure you have your seatbelt on. For any reason, if someone was to hit the vehicle in the rear, you don't want to cause any more bodily damage. And when you're getting out of the vehicle, make sure you look.

When you're on the side of the road, try not to stay in front of your car as much as possible. If you have to look under the hood, that's understandable, but pretty much stay behind the car or if there's a guardrail, make sure you stay behind the guardrail. In the event that you had a flat tire and it happens to be on the side that the dirt is on, if the vehicle is on the dirt, it's not gonna be safe to jack up the vehicle and change the tire real quick. So, do the best you can, do it safely. You want to make sure you warn other drivers that you pulled over on the side of the road not only with your hazard lights but you can use some of those traffic cones, road flares, or they even make LED road flares that are even safer. It's not exactly safe for us to be on the side of the highway making this video with our crew. So we're gonna go back to the studio.

If you notice that your car starts stumbling almost like it's not shifting properly and you have no power, take a look at your gas gauge, you're probably running out of gas. In the event that it's not an emergency to pull over right away and you see that there's an exit fairly close, you wanna pull off a highway or off a major road into a parking lot is the best situation. When you're checking under your hood, if you see smoke or steam coming from under the hood, be very careful when you go to open it.

Oh, hey, I didn't see you there. In the event that your engine is overheating and maybe you have a lot of smoke pouring out of the engine, you wanna take a look at the coolant level. But you don't wanna open the radiator cap or the coolant cap at this time, but check and see if there's any coolant in there. You could sit on the side of the road, let it cool down and if you have access to any water, you could fill it up with water temporarily. But make sure you flush the system eventually or you're gonna have problems. If your engines running rough, some of the things you can look at is the snorkel. Just see if anything's loose, see if anything's on attached, or the vacuum lines. If any of the vacuum lines are not connected or off or that's gonna give you a drivability issue, you can take a look at any of the connectors, see if anything's loose, if anything is popped off that can give you some issues.

Also checking your oil level, have a rag with you. Wipe it down. Put it back in and take a look at it. Make sure that's up to par. I know it doesn't seem like it would be realistic that the oil level would cause a drivability issue but with some of the newer vehicles that have VVT solenoids, the oil level is crucial. If they're not getting the right amount of oil, they're gonna give you problems. Power steering fluid, you want to check that. If the power steering seems like it's not working or it's whining a lot, check that level and top it off if possible.

In most vehicles, if you don't have power steering fluid, you can actually use transmission fluid. And if your engine is overheating and your battery light came on and you probably lost power steering, most likely it's a serpentine belt that is broken or the tensioner has fallen off. There's not much you can do from the side of the road. If there's anything I missed or if you've broken down and have a story of a way that you bailed yourself out, leave me a comment below. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to our channel, ring the bell, turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our videos.