Driving in fog is daunting. The low visibility will make even the most experienced drivers nervous, and they should be cautious while operating a deadly two-ton machine with less vision than they’re used to. Knowing how to safely operate your vehicle in dense fog can be the difference between making it home in one piece or not. So, it’s best to brush up on your driving techniques before tackling the foggy roads. The National Weather Service and other government bodies have issued several warnings about driving in fog, including several lists of tips for driving in foggy conditions. These tips can help drivers stay safe themselves and also keep the people around them safe. Here are the most important tips for driving in fog, as per the National Weather Service.
To populate this list, we looked at the various publications from the National Weather Service regarding driving in low visibility conditions due to fog. Then, we compiled the tips that were published several times over multiple sources as we regarded these as the most important. We also provided a bit of analysis to give a bit of insight into why these tips are important and should be followed for best safety practices.
Slow Down
The most important tip that gets harped on in every possible publication is to take your journey slow. Whatever speed you want to go, subtract a little bit. When driving in low visibility, you have less time to react to the conditions around you because you can’t see them as well. Lowering your speed gives you more time to react since your car isn’t hurtling down the road at high speeds. The faster an object is moving forward, the longer it will take it to come to a complete stop. In high visibility, you can react to things that are far away from you, giving you enough time to stop or slow down if something or someone gets in your way. However, in low visibility, not only can you not see things as well, but other people and things can’t see you as well, too.
With visibility low from all angles, you may find yourself in a sticky situation where the extra reaction time would have helped. So, get ahead of the game and slow down pre-emptively. It could save you or someone else from a terrible fate.
Use Your Low-Beam Lights
Low-beam lights are a must when driving in fog. They not only improve your visibility moving forward, but they also improve how visible you are to others on the road. When you turn your low-beam lights on, your tail lights turn on as well. This additional light source can signal your presence to people behind you who might otherwise not know you were there due to the fog. Low-beam lights should be prioritized over high-beam ones in fog as high-beam lights can reduce visibility for everyone on the road when there’s fog. Low beams are not only less likely to create glare in fog but they’re also angled to the sides, which prevents them from flashing directly into the eyes of oncoming drivers.
Using your low-beam lights will improve how visible your vehicle is to both people ahead of you and those behind you. Cars on both sides of the road in front of you will see the low-beam lights on the front of your car and cars behind you will see the tail lights. Car lights are pretty strong and able to cut through fog unless it’s exceptionally thick. So, turn them on and prevent a tragedy!
Don’t Use Your High-Beam Lights
As we just mentioned, it’s best not to use your high-beam lights in fog. This is because high-beam lights are strong and can lower visibility because they’re directed into the eyes of oncoming drivers. The brightness and positioning can blind drivers as close as 150 feet from you, even in perfect conditions. Fog is typically made of mostly water, but can also contain ice crystals. The water and ice particles in fog refract light that passes through the fog, and high-beam lights are so bright that the fog will not only amplify the light in some respects but also create a glare around the light from the reflection.
Fog can reflect your high-beam lights at other drivers, blinding them in the already-poor visibility. However, it can also reflect the light from your high beams back into your eyes and make your own visibility lower. Don’t use your high-beam lights because it lowers visibility all around and can cause accidents in foggy conditions.
Don’t Tailgate
Tailgating is bad form to begin with, but in foggy conditions, riding someone’s bumper is a surefire way to end up crashing into them. The lowered visibility means you’ll have fewer stimuli to react to in the event of a sudden stop. While in normal conditions, you might see the thing that made them stop, giving you a heads up that they might stop, in foggy conditions, you probably can barely see the bumper of the car in front of you, let alone the things in front of that car. This means you won’t have as much time to hit the brakes and have them engage. If you’re close to the cars in front of you, you’re more likely to end up hitting them because you can’t stop in time.
Additionally, fog is often preceded by precipitation. Cold, dry air at the surface causes water to pass through the air as rain to evaporate and the dew point rises, forming fog. Thus, the ground will probably be wet, making it even harder to stop on a dime.
Stay in the Correct Lane
It can be hard to see the median when you’re driving in fog and that can lead to ending up in the wrong lane by accident, especially if the fog is particularly thick. Ensuring you stay in the correct lane can help reduce the number of surprises you encounter and drastically reduce the chances of a head-on collision caused by jumping the median. You’ll probably have to pay a little extra attention to the lines on the road when driving in the fog to stay in the right lane, especially since lanes can move positions fast when the road changes shape.
The National Weather Service recommends keeping your eyes on the median and following it with your eyes to ensure that you stay within the confines of your lane. While it might seem redundant to tell you to pay attention while driving in fog, that is the best way to avoid an accident in general, but especially in low visibility.
If the Fog Is Too Thick, Pull Over
Fog can get better or worse as you’re driving and it’s not a shameful thing to accept that maybe the fog is too dense for you to travel safely right now. If the fog starts to get so thick that you’re unable to operate your vehicle safely, turn on your hazard lights to warn oncoming drivers of your presence. Then, in this situation, with your hazards already on, you want to pull over at a rest stop and park your car. Ensure that you engage the parking brake and take your foot off the brake pedal so that the tail lights turn off. Otherwise, another driver may mistakenly run into you because they haven’t realized you’ve come to a complete stop.
If there are no rest stops you can pull over at, the National Weather Service recommends pulling as far off the road as you can safely. This will prevent you from becoming an obstacle that could jump out of the fog at another driver trying to get through the area. They recommend following all of the above instructions, but pulling onto the side of the road instead of looking for a driveway or other location to park in.