Car emergency kits are essential for drivers, but most of us don’t really think about them! A good roadside emergency kit can help prevent harm to the passengers, driver, or any other person involved in an accident on the road, including a bicyclist or pedestrian. They can also help you out of a bind if you end up in the middle of nowhere with a car problem. Selecting the right items for your emergency kit can be the difference between an inconvenience and a full-blown emergency.
Car Safety Kits for New Drivers
If you’re looking at purchasing your first car (or your child’s first car) it’s a great idea to get an emergency kit put together right away. For new drivers, this sort of emergency kit for a car might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but unexpected things happen on the road, and being prepared with a roadside emergency kit can help keep real emergencies to a minimum.
Road safety tools will go a long way in helping you better prepare for injuries or medical emergencies, and help you to avoid getting stuck somewhere with no help in sight. This list of road safety essentials is built to help you make sure that every car in your household is well-equipped in case of an emergency.
1. Your Car’s Manual
Let’s start off your car’s emergency kit with one of the most basic, but often forgotten, essentials: your car’s manual.
Your car came with a manual. You may have looked at it from time to time to check maintenance requirements or how to operate certain functions of your car, or you might have left it untouched in the glovebox for years. When you’re thinking about emergency preparedness for the road, though, your car manual is one of the best tools you can have.
It will include things like what to do when different things go wrong with your car, guides to your car’s instrument panel, and what all the warning lights in your car mean. By checking your car’s manual you can quickly identify many issues your car may be having and get a headstart on how to address them.
2. Fire extinguisher
This is one of the tools most people probably never consider leaving in their car. After all, what are the chances your car will actually catch fire? Pretty low, right? Well.. maybe not. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, between 2014-2016, 1 in 8 fires that fire departments responded to were vehicle fires.
I don’t know about you, but that’s way more than I would’ve guessed.
So, can you keep a fire extinguisher in your car? Yes, you absolutely can keep a fire extinguisher in your vehicle. Keep in mind that if you’re concerned about the potential for an extinguisher to explode from the build-up of pressure in a hot car, that’s very unlikely, although you do want to be wary of the way temperature can affect a fire extinguisher in your car.
According to this useful guide by a professional firefighter, fire extinguishers should only be stored between 40-120 degrees Fahrenheit. For those that live in warm areas, you know that the temperature in a car can quickly build beyond the true outside temps in a hurry, so keep that in mind. If the extinguisher stays in the car with those extreme temperatures, you run the risk that it won’t function properly when you need it.
Here’s a guide on what to do in case your car does catch fire.
3. First aid kit
If you have nothing else in your car for emergencies, have a first aid kit. You just never know when you or someone else might need some immediate medical attention, and this is a bare minimum essential you need to be prepared for those situations.
Some of the common items that should be in your first aid kit include: adhesive tape, bandages, gauze pads, antibiotics, ointment, scissors, plastic bags, and disposable gloves. There should also be a first aid manual easily accessible along with the first aid kit itself to help guide you through what you need to do.
You can also download the First Aid Red Cross app for your phone to help walk you through emergency situations.
4. Water
It’s always a good idea to keep some water and a few snacks in your car just in case you get stuck somewhere for a while. Water, in particular, is essential because if you end up stuck in the middle of nowhere (especially somewhere hot) without it you may find yourself going from an auto emergency to a medical emergency real quick.
Grab a case of water bottles or a couple of gallon jugs to stash in the back before you hit the road.
Extra tip: It’s a good idea to change out the water you’re keeping in your car every so often or keep it in a non-plastic bottle as there’s some debate about whether or not chemicals from plastic bottles can contaminate the water after a while, particularly in a hot car.
Also, it’s possible that a plastic bottle (or any clear object like it) can act as a fire-started in your car by focusing the sunlight on the interior of your vehicle, burning it. Although unlikely, it’s definitely something to be aware of so you can avoid it. You don’t want to have to use that fire extinguisher, right?
5. A car jack, tire iron, and spare tire
Most cars will come with a spare tire, but you’ll want to make sure you 1) do in fact have one, and 2) it’s in good condition. It’s especially important to double-check your spare tire if you’re planning on driving for several hours, or through remote locations where help will take a long time to arrive in the event you get a flat.
A jack is often also included when you purchase your car, likely stored with the spare tire. Again, it’s a good idea to double-check that it’s there and that it’s in good working condition. The same applies for a tire iron, which you’ll use to take off the lug nuts so you can remove the tire.
If you’re not sure how to change a tire yourself, the internet is your friend. Take a quick minute to watch a tutorial on how to change a tire and use a jack. This is a good one:
This video is more applicable to what you’ll need to do if you get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere because of the tools he uses, but I really like the overall explanation of the previous video, which is why I’m including them both:
You want to be familiar with the basic concept of how to change your tire before you take off, just in case you land in a spot with sketchy cell service.
6. Lube
It’s a good idea to keep a little lube (yes, lube, don’t make it weird), like WD-40, in your car in the event that you need to change a tire and the lug nuts are extra difficult to get off. Spraying a little WD-40 on the lug nuts can help loosen them up.
7. Fix-A-Flat
Fix-a-flat is a super-handy tool to have in your car in case you get a flat tire. It both fixes the puncture causing the flat and reinflates the tire for you. It’s isn’t a permanent solution. You still need to get the tire to a repair shop in a couple of days, but it’s a great item to have in your emergency car kit.
8. Tire Pressure Gauge
A tire pressure gauge is absolutely a road safety essential, and they’re really small, so they’ll fit easily into any emergency kit you put together for your car. A tire that’s over or under-filled is at risk of a blowout while you’re driving. You might also get a notification that one of your tires is low on air, but not know which one. These little tools will help you figure that out quickly.
9. Tire Pump
Did you know that you can get your very own portable tire pump? Forget the struggle to find change for the paid air pumps at gas stations. If you keep this as part of your car’s emergency kit then you get to just plug your personal tire pump into your car, wait for a couple of minutes, and be on your way!
There are a few different styles from the very small, minimal pump, to the more feature-rich style that may include things like a built-in tire pressure gauge. They work by plugging into your car and using the battery for power. It’s a great tool to keep with you if you’re traveling long distances, or don’t need a full tire change right away, but just need to add a little more air for safety.
10. Flares
Road flares are particularly useful at night. They light up the area around your car so that passing cars or emergency vehicles can see you and your car. For instance, if you do happen to get a flat tire and need roadside assistance at night, the flares allow whoever is coming to help to easily see where you are.
11. Cones / Triangles
Cones and triangles serve a similar purpose to flares but are a little less dramatic. They still allow other people to clearly see you and your car to either give you plenty of space or to flag down emergency services.
12. Car battery charger
Similar to a portable tire pump, you can also keep a portable jump starter in your car in case your battery dies unexpectedly. Add this tool to your car’s emergency kit if you often travel to remote areas where other passing cars are rare or it would take a while for help to get to you. In those cases, if your car battery calls it quits, you’ll be able to jump it all by yourself.
You little independent driver you.
13. Jumper Cables
If you do happen to have someone there to help you jump your car, you’ll be thankful you have a pair of jumper cables in your car’s emergency stash. Jumper cables are the red and black cables that hook your car’s battery to another car’s battery to give your car a “jump”. You can also use them to lend a hand to someone else that might be having road trouble sometime.
14. Portable cellphone chargers
Since phones have become such essential parts of our everyday lives, it’s a really good idea to keep an extra car-compatible phone charger in your vehicle at all times. Some cars are equipped with USB ports now that allow you to just plug your charging cord directly into the car, which is great, but you can also get adapters to plug virtually any type of phone charger into your car.
You may also want to make a habit of keeping a fully charged, rechargeable power bank with you on longer trips in case you run into a situation where you can’t use your car to charge your phone immediately.
15. A map
Yes. Like an actual map.
In case of an emergency where worst comes to worst and your phone battery dies, your car battery dies so you can’t’ charge your phone, you’ve opted not to include a car battery charger or a phone battery bank, and there’s no one around to help. You need to be able to have some sense of where you are and where you need to go.
Even if you don’t end up in that level of isolation, a real, physical map is just an extra layer of protection to have available should you ever need it. And they’re so easy to just put in your backseat pocket and forget. It takes zero effort to include them in your road safety kit, so go for it!
At the very least your grandparents will be very impressed that you still know what a *real* map is.
16. Pet Seat Belts and Containers
Check out this list of 32 car accessories for pet owners, which includes some amazing crate options. Although you might have considered that having a pet loose in the car might result in your pet being injured in case of an accident, you may not have realized that your pet can also essentially become a projectile during an accident.
This basically means that your beloved pet could either end up hurting themselves or could even end up flying through the car to hit you, injuring or even killing you both. There are many options to help you keep your pet contained while you’re driving, including crates, pet harness seat belts, and row barriers.