Category: Car Safety

If you drive, you need to know how to change a flat. Hopefully, you have some kind of roadside assistance program that will send someone out to change it for you, but you can’t count on being able to call to for help. Changing a tire isn’t difficult. You can do it. But you need to know how to do it safely. You face three dangers, getting hit by another car, being injured by your own vehicle due to improper jacking, and malfunction of your spare. Here are some tips for changing you tire without getting hurt.

Be Prepared

Make sure you have all of the proper supplies in your vehicle at all times. These include:

• Owner’s manual
• Jack
• Lug wrench
• Spare tire
• Key lock adaptor if required on your vehicle

Check your spare for proper inflation every time you check the rest of your tires. Also, check the age of your spare. If it’s 10 years old or older replace it, even if it looks fine and holds air.

Find a Safe Spot

You should jack up your car on a flat hard surface. Most importantly, you need to be safely out of traffic. A parking lot is better than the roadside. If you must change your tire on the side of the road, give yourself plenty of room, use your hazard lights, and set up flares and reflective triangles.

Changing Your Tire

Before your start, check all of your supplies. If you don’t have everything you need or if your spare is flat, you can stop now. If everything is in order, get all passengers out of the vehicle, apply the parking brake and block the tire diagonal from the one you are changing.

Check your owner’s manual for the proper jack placement for your specific vehicle. Remove the hubcap. Loosen, but do not remove, the lug nuts before you lift the vehicle. Jack the car up until the tire is no longer touching the ground and has enough clearance for you to remove it. Remove the lug nuts and tire. Put the spare on and replace the lug nuts, tightening in the order given in your owner’s manual. Lower the car and give the lug nuts a final tightening.

Read The Importance of Tire Safety for tips on how to avoid a flat or blowout in the first place.

Car accidents are a leading cause of death for children in the U.S., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Even if you’re doing all the right things to keep your children as safe as possible, you could be doing them wrong putting them at even greater risk. The CDC estimates that 59% of car seats and 20% of booster seats are used incorrectly. When you do not use child restraints or use them improperly, you not only put your child at risk for injury or death, you may be compromising your ability to recover the money you need to pay for your child’s medical bills and more if they are seriously injured.

Children and Drunk Driving Accidents

The CDC gives us some frightening statistics about drunk driving and children. From 2001 to 2010:

• About one in five child passenger deaths involved drunk driving. “Child” meaning kids 14 or younger.
• 65% of the time, it was the driver of the car the child was riding in who was drunk.
• 61% of the kids who were riding with drunk drivers when they were killed were not wearing seat belts.

There is a small kernel of hope in those statistics. While they don’t tell us how many children were riding with drunk parents vs how many were riding with drunk friends, it is clear that we could substantially reduce the number of deaths if we can simply kids to never, ever get in the car with a drunk driver.

Protecting Your Child Legally

If your child is seriously injured in a car accident, there will be expenses. Your child will need medical care and may be disabled for life. To give your child the best medical care and other services, you’re going to need every penny you can get. Of course your hope is that it will never happen, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be prepared.

Learn about the child restraint laws in your state, and learn how to use child restraints properly. In some states, failure to properly restrain your child can cost you some or all of the compensation you need and deserve for their injuries, even if you were not at fault for your accident.

If your child has been injured in a car accident, read more about Choosing the Right Personal Injury Lawyer.