In the UK, you could face a fine of £60.00 and 3 penalty points if you don’t clear your windows of ice and/or snow, this includes your wing mirrors. Not many people know that its illegal if snow falls off your car and hits another windscreen.
Firstly, and not part of our 3’s is not to use a hair dryer or a portable heater to de-ice your car, mixing electric with snow, ice or damp conditions never ends well, not even for Mr Bean.
We’ve put together a list of 3 things that you need to remember when de-icing your car:
- Never use hot water on your screen, it can instantly crack your glass and lead to a very expensive repair bill, especially on newer cars with lots of built in gadgets within the screen.
- Never use a metal scraper or even a key. Anything metal can scratch the toughest of windscreen glass and replacing glass in modern cars is not cheap.
- Ran out of De-icer? No issues at all, make your own. Mix warm water with some salt and place into a spray bottle. Make sure you don’t use too much salt though, it can damage your windscreen in large quantities.
We all have gadgets nowadays from Siri to Alexa to Google Home, check the weather conditions for the next day and should it predict ice, just get up 15 minutes earlier.
Although, probably not too good for the environment, I switch my engine on with full windscreen de-mist and heated rear windscreen, which melts the ice and the snow.
I make sure that the windscreen wipers aren’t stuck to the screen and my number plates are clear.
