Before the First Freeze: A Winter Car Check That Starts With the Tires, Not the Shopping Cart
AUTOMOTIVE / U.S. ROAD JOURNAL Winter car check Before the first freeze. Vehicles travel through blowing snow on New York Route 211 near Montgomery, February 2015. Archival photograph. Daniel Case · Original · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Resized. Tires. Visibility. Road status. A winter-ready car is only part of a winter-ready trip. NEWJINMEDIA · October 31, 2026 Before the first freeze, check tire pressure, tread, visibility and the road’s status—not just the emergency kit in the trunk. A winter-ready vehicle is not defined by a bag of emergency equipment in the trunk. It needs tires at the correct pressure, enough tread, working visibility systems and a route that is actually open. As November approaches, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's guidance offers a practical way to separate checks an owner can make from repairs that should be handled before a storm. The goal is not to make every journey possible. It is to avoid discovering a preventable problem when road condition...