The Fashionable Driver

**Special Post** Top 10 things you need in your car for roadside emergencies **Special Post**

I know I know, this blog is supposed to be about fashion. However, I thought, as a service to the gals out there, I should do a special section on what tools you should always have in your car. I am tired of women not being able to perform simple repair tasks on their car. They are not that hard and they will save you time and money! So, this will be a woman’s emergency car kit guide.

Seriously though, I have had horrible trouble on the road before and been without the car tools I needed. It can also be very dangerous. So I am going to list some crucial tools ladies should never drive without. You should consider assembling this in a compact bundled kit:

1. Hand-Charged Flashlight- Murphy’s Law states that if it is going to happen it is going to happen at night. It is not fun to be on the side of some Texas chainsaw-massacre road in the middle of the night and have no flashlight. It will be necessary for all repairs. Should be hand-charged so that batteries are not an issue
2. Jumper Cables- This will be the most used item in your whole kit. These are used when your car (or another persons) has a dead battery and you need to restart it. This happens so often! For information as to what cables look like and how to restart a car/use jumper cables, click here.
3. Mace/Pepper Spray/Gun- whatever your favorite method of defense is, I recommend having it in your kit. It is “piece of mind.”
4. *Tire-Jack- This is what you use when you have a flat and need to change it for the spare. It is a device that allows you to lift one side of the vehicle so you can make changes to a tire. It is standard in almost every vehicle so it should already be there but make sure it hasn’t been removed. See owner’s manual for location and operation instructions.
5. *Tire-Iron- This is what you will use to get the lug nuts off your tire’s wheel. The lug nuts hold the wheel to the car. and will need to be released…probably the hardest part of changing a tire. Again, this will be included in your vehicle and should be near the Tire-Jack…it is often used as the device with which you will operate the Jack. Make sure this is still there.
6. Tire-Guage- This is a device which measures the pressure in a tire, usually in PSI (pounds per square inch). The max psi is given on the side of every tire.
7. Rain Poncho and Gloves- Murphy’s law again…
8. Tool Kit- Just a small set of tools always comes in handy. Screwdriver, several wrenches, pliers, etc.
9. Road Flares or Reflective Triangles-You will put these out in a staggered fashion down the road. Longer distances are better for highway. They allow cars to slow and use caution before driving near your emergency.
10. Duct-tape and Bungees- problem solver galore. If you can’t fix it…tape it and hold it together…or something like that.

*You don’t need to purchase these, they should already be in your car

If you’d rather just buy a pre-made kit, here is a great one that pretty much includes everything I just listed:

AAA 77 Piece Warrior Road Assistance Kit

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 12:06 am; and is filed under Special. You can follow any response to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.