When you wake up the morning after a snowstorm to find 2 feet of fresh powder piled up in your driveway, you can guarantee that traveling anywhere outside your home is going to be a chore. Driving is going to be especially dangerous.

The only foolproof way to stay safe when the roads are covered in winter snow is to stay at home. But sometimes, you have to go out. So if you must, here are some ways to make your trip safer and easier for you and your fellow drivers.

If you have advice to add, log in and contribute.

Prep your ride

Part of this must be done ahead of time. The rest of your preparation can be done once you know a storm is coming or even as you’re digging out for the daily commute.

Before the storm

Most important, if you live in a snowy climate, get your snow tires installed a month or so before you’ll need them.

Also, get a set of tire chains and store them in the trunk. They provide an incredible amount of traction in extreme conditions. Chains are required on some mountain passes. Be aware that chains are illegal in certain states because of the damage they can do to the road surface, be sure to check your local laws.

Pack in your car: a blanket (or sleeping bag), flares, a shovel, a small bag of sand or kitty litter, matches and a candle in an old coffee can. The first will keep you warm in case you break down and have to stay in your car for hours. The second will help you mark your car for other motorists to see in a storm, The third can help dig you out. The fourth can provide traction if you’re stuck and your wheels are spinning (kitty litter has larger particles and users report that it works better than sand). As for the rest, you can put some sand in the bottom of the coffee can, insert the candle, and light it to make a small lamp and heat source.

Packing food and water in your car is also a great idea if you’re traveling longer distances in the wintertime.

Heading out in the snow

• Remove all snow from every surface of your car. Scrape the ice and packed snow off your windows, side mirrors, headlights and taillights.

• Top off your windshield-wiper fluid. Use de-icing fluid if you can get it.

• Fill your gas tank. The extra weight can provide extra traction on slippery roads. It also could come in handy if you end up stuck and have to keep the car running to stay warm.

• Make sure your tires are filled to their recommended PSI. Low tire pressure can slow your vehicle’s reaction to steering.

Take it easy

When driving on snowy roads, it’s important to move slowly and be very aware of your surroundings. Driving too fast is a major factor in winter car accidents. Accelerate and brake gently and evenly. Look ahead to turns, intersections or obstacles before you encounter them. Avoid any quick or sudden movements, which can cause your car to lose traction and slide or fishtail.

Drive half the posted speed limit, and double the fair-weather distance between you and the car in front of you. An easy calculation is four car lengths per 10 mph you’re driving. That’s 12 car lengths at 30 mph. Maintain that distance when you decelerate or approach a full stop.

Keep your lights on to increase your visibility.

Downshift to decelerate instead of using your brakes, especially on downhills. Use a low gear when climbing hills.

Also, take extra care when crossing bridges or when driving on lightly-traveled roads. These areas are more apt to be icy. If you encounter a snowplow or a truck dumping salt and sand on the road, don’t pass it. (Think about it).

Emergency measures

If you start to slide, take your foot off the accelerator, but don’t hit the brakes. (If you’re driving a manual transmission vehicle, take your foot off the gas, don’t hit the brakes, but fully depress the clutch pedal.)

Steer in the direction you want to go, which is often in the direction of the skid. (If the tail end of your car is skidding right, steer right.)

Your car should start to self-correct. Accelerate gently to get your wheels moving again and increase traction. If you need to stop, brake gently. Be careful, as braking hard will stop your wheels and eliminate any traction you may have.

If you have antilock brakes, press your brake pedal gently. You may feel them pulse — this is normal. If you have traditional brakes, pump the brakes gently.

When you’re stuck

If you end up stuck in a snowbank or on the side of the road, press your accelerator gently to see if you can get free. This isn’t a time to hit the gas: Your wheels will likely spin and get you nowhere.

Failing that, you can try rocking your way out. If your car moved a little, gently drive forward up to that point, then release the accelerator and step on the clutch (if driving manual), letting the car slide back. Repeat. The idea is to nudge the car back and forth with gentle use of the accelerator, like pushing on a swing. If you’re not too badly stuck, eventually it’ll make enough room to build enough speed to break out of the snowbank. Try not to spin the wheels; that’ll polish the packed snow under the wheels into ice. You can also steer while rocking, to turn the car to an angle against the snowbank.

If you’re stuck for sure, get out and dig the snow away from your wheels and even under the car if you think it’s keeping you from moving forward or backward. (Remember that shovel?) Then place some of that sand you packed under each wheel, especially the drive wheels — front and/or rear depending on your car.

If all else fails, try to flag down another motorist or call a loved one to help you arrange for a tow truck. Is this too late to suggest you sign up for an automobile club membership (or just add towing coverage to you car insurance)?

Harnessing the wealth of OpenStreetMap data, MapQuest has launched an “Open” version of itself, allowing anyone to add restaurants, fix errors, define the best directions that real drivers know, and otherwise improve the mapped world around them.

If there was any way MapQuest could differentiate itself from the seemingly ubiquitous Google Maps, this is a pretty good stab at it. OpenStreetMaps has more than 300,000 registered users worldwide, and offers results that speak to both local knowledge and dedicated contributors’ fixes. Not every area is quite so filled out, of course, but you can learn a thing or two looking around the Open version of your town. And if you don’t like what you see, you can file a bug.

MapQuest Open is free to use, and free to edit and modify.

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

Android: Google Maps on Android has always been great, but today’s update brings it to a new level of awesome, adding 3D maps, compass mode, and offline caching so you can get anywhere you need to go—even without internet.

We’ve been waiting for this update ever since Google previewed it last week, and it’s everything we hoped it’d be. You can now explore maps in three dimensions, showing you 3D representations of buildings, and using your phone’s compass to automatically rotate the map so it always faces the same direction you are. The screenshots may make it look gimmicky, but the ability for Maps to more accurately represent what you’re seeing in real life makes navigating a breeze, no matter where you are. Plus, it’s worth mentioning that this version of Maps is fast—way faster than the last version. Moving around maps and zooming in and out is so smooth it’s blowing my mind a little.

A possibly even cooler feature is offline caching, which allows you to use that awesome turn-by-turn navigation we love so much even if you lose internet connection. In fact, it will proactively cache large map areas based on where you spend the most time—meaning Maps is extremely fast and reliable in the places you need it most. It can even reroute your turn-by-turn directions without connection, so you don’t have to worry about getting where you need to go when you have crappy 3G coverage. By default, it only caches when connected to Wi-Fi, but there is a setting to allow prefetching on non-Wi-Fi connections as well. Hit the link to read more, or just head to the Market to update it and try it out for yourself.

Google Maps 5.0 is a free download for Android phones. Android 1.6 devices can get Maps 5.0, but most of the new features (including 3D maps and offline caching) requires 2.0 or above.

OLATHE, Kan., Dec 07, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) –

Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN ), the global leader in satellite navigation, today announced the creation of OpenCaching.com, a completely free online community for creating, sharing and finding geocaches around the world. An exciting and engaging outdoor activity, geocaching combines exploration, education, entertainment and recreation. At OpenCaching.com, everyone can enjoy all of the caches and helpful information — the tips, descriptions, previous attempts, mass downloads, etc. — for free.

“Garmin is extending its reputation for ease of use even further into geocaching, creating the most intuitive experience possible,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “By making it free and easy to download every detail of every cache, OpenCaching.com will introduce more people to this great activity and show them just how fun, easy and rewarding it can be. OpenCaching.com gives us a chance to go beyond the development of hardware and software and interact directly with the vibrant global community of cachers.”

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt where participants of all ages explore the outdoors, hiding and finding containers of various shapes and sizes that are filled with collectables, trinkets and logbooks for signing in and letting fellow cachers know you were there. Creating a cache consists of placing a container in a public area, saving the GPS coordinates and uploading them to a website. Finding a cache is as simple as searching the website and downloading those details to a GPS handheld. As free and open as the great outdoors, OpenCaching.com was created to help promote the growth of geocaching and build the worldwide community of cachers.

The Awesome Factor

Continuing Garmin’s role as an innovator within the geocaching community, OpenCaching.com gives creators and seekers alike a way to quantify the “Awesomeness” of any given cache. While every cache has its enjoyable elements that make it unique, everyone has personal favorites that defy traditional descriptions. For that reason, OpenCaching.com lets users rank the Awesomeness in addition to size, terrain and difficulty. These four factors are displayed in a “bulls-eye” illustration for each cache, giving geocachers a unique and vivid idea of the fun that lies ahead. And cachers themselves can rate these factors, turning the bulls-eye illustration into a true representation of peer reviews.

Open to everyone

The strength of OpenCaching.com lies within the geocaching community, from diehard cachers to families and classrooms trying it for the first time (for which there is an informative how-to guide included on the site). Everyone — regardless of experience or numbers of caches found or placed — is welcome to the same information and invited to get as involved as they want. OpenCaching.com will work with any device or software package that can read GPX files, regardless of manufacturer.

“Because OpenCaching is brand new, we’re counting on cachers everywhere to get creative and get involved,” said Bartel. “We want everyone who posts, seeks and finds a cache to have the pride of ownership in this new site, and there’s no better way than to build it together. As the word gets out about OpenCaching, we expect the number of caches posted to grow quickly.”

Through the recent announcements of OpenCaching.com and the chirp(TM) wireless geocaching beacon, geocachers around the world now have exciting new tools to unleash the potential of their creativity. Garmin is just one of countless businesses — large and small, corporate and self-owned — that make up the interdependent geocaching ecosystem. From collectables to events to software such as mobile, web-based and desktop applications, these creative collaborations stimulate ideas and enthusiasm. Garmin’s goal is to provide even more support and opportunities to the various innovators involved in this global activity.

For cachers who have created or found caches elsewhere, Garmin designed OpenCaching’s cache code system to seamlessly coexist and integrate with other databases, devices and applications. Also, developers can access the OpenCaching.com database through an API, and cache owners can share their information on other sites through the Creative Commons license. Cachers can quickly get credit for cross-listed caches found on other sites and easily add existing caches they own to OpenCaching.com, where they can also be tagged and enhanced with more helpful information.

SOURCE: Garmin International Inc.

Garmin International Inc.

Jake Jacobson, 913-397-8200

media.relations@garmin.com

Inexpensive phone mounts are almost always disappointing with low-quality parts and a poor grip on your phone. This cheap DIY mount is slim, solid, and will fit your phone perfectly.

Lifehacker reader Robbie Khan was sick of his cheap and crappy phone mount. It was bulky, it didn’t hold his phone well, and the suction cup wasn’t very effective. His clever, and cost effective solution was to craft his own from cheaper and superior parts. He bought a universal Garmin GPS mount with a matching mount plate and an inexpensive hard case for his phone. If you’ve never owned a Garmin GPS the mounts they include with their units are rock solid and—thanks to a lever-lock design in the suction cup base—they’ve got great staying power. He used automotive mirror glue to affix the mount plate to the hard case of the phone and ended up with a super slim and stable case that fits like a glove.

Check out the link below to see additional photos of the mount, the case, and the backplate glued on. Have a cheap but effective DIY hack—phone-related or otherwise—to share? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

DIY Garmin Phone Mount

Via LifeHacker

Using a hand-held cell phone and or certain devices while driving will no longer be allowed in New Brunswick as a result of amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act introduced in the legislative assembly.

“Texting and using cell phones while driving are dangerous behaviours that have become too common,” said Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Robert Trevors. “In fact, studies show that a significant percentage of collisions are the result of distracted driving. By introducing this legislation, our government is sending a message that distracted driving is not acceptable.”

The legislation will prohibit the handling or other manipulation of the following while driving:

•hand-held cellular telephones, except when operated in a hands-free manner
•texting devices
•portable entertainment devices.

The bill will also prohibit the manual programming or adjusting of any Global Positioning System (GPS) system while driving.

In addition, television-style viewing screens, monitors, DVD players, and computer screens would not be permitted within the visual range of the operator of the driver of a motor vehicle.

Police, fire and ambulance personnel would be exempt from these restrictions when performing their duties. Ham radio operators would be permitted to use two-way radios for emergency search and rescue activities.

The legislation would allow drivers to use a communication device to report an emergency to the appropriate authorities, such as to 911.

The legislation will allow motor vehicle operators and commercial vehicle operators to use two-way radios for commercial purposes.

Drivers who violate the legislation will be subject to the loss of three points from their licence and a subject to fine of $172.50.

The legislation will come into effect in early 2011 following a public awareness and education campaign.

Via /

Ordnance Survey (Great Britain’s national mapping agency) has a great article on Geocaching.

Geocaching (pronounced ‘geo-cashing’) is a game of hide and seek. Geocachers place containers known as ‘caches’ and set their location using a GPS (global positioning system), this gives the latitude and longitude position of the cache. They then post the location details on a website for people to find. Geocaching isn’t hard, and can add interest to a walk in the countryside, however, if you do try it, beware, it can be quite addictive!

Geocaching is a relatively new activity, only made possible by the decision by the US government in May 2000 to take off their ‘selective availability’ restrictions for public-access GPS, which made it possible for GPS to be 10 times more accurate than before.
The chances of finding a geocache by chance when you’re out walking are fairly slim, that’s because they’re hidden. The whole point of geocaching is to hide a box, or some other type of container, and then invite people to try and find it, so they’re not usually fairly hard to spot.

So what’s geocaching all about and how can you have a go? If it all sounds a bit too geeky and technical, then think again, it’s really not, with a bit of pre-preparation and luck you can soon start finding caches yourself. Geocaching is free, but you need the relevant Ordnance Survey map and a GPS device or GPS-enabled phone.

There are now an estimated 1 million ‘geocaches’ around the world, and there are likely to be several hundred hidden, waiting to be found, within a few miles of your front door. Their locations can be found on a number of websites such as www.geocaching.com, and the sites give details such as position, level of difficulty and terrain (D/T where 1 is easy 5 is hard), type of cache and the dates that the caches were found. Using these sites is free and they have great information for beginners, but for geocaching fans a premium membership gives even more detail about the caches.

‘Cache’ is a word meaning storage container (and also memory for computer buffs). Caches are usually plastic Tupperware boxes of various sizes or ammo boxes; they can be fairly large, but they can also be tiny tubes like 35mm film cases, so called ‘nano-caches’. Some caches may lead to other (multi-caches). One thing they have in common is they’re all tight and waterproof.

The treasure hidden in the cache usually consists of small low value trading items, and a logbook to record that you’ve found the cache, where you come from, and how you found it. The etiquette is that if you take any of the items out of the cache, you must replace them with items of the same or more value – thus keeping the cache full. So, don’t forget to take with you some items to leave once you’ve found a cache. The only rules are no food (it attracts wildlife), nothing offensive (children are geocachers too), and make them interesting.

So, all this sounds very easy, ‘pinpoint accuracy’ of your GPS and an Ordnance Survey map to guide you to the location. Well, not quite, GPSs are not that accurate, so both the hider of the cache and you, the finder could be out by up to 10ft, making a 20ft square area to find it in. There’s also terrain, vegetation, obstacles and position of the cache to take into account. Cache hiders don’t want to make it too easy after all it’s meant to be a hunt – so once you’re in the general area it’s best to use a bit of brainpower to track the caches down.

Don’t be too disheartened if your first cache isn’t there, people do stumble across them and some take them away. So-called ‘muggles’ (named from the Harry Potter books) deliberately or inadvertently steal caches. So, recently found caches are more likely to still be there.

Looking for a few geocaches when you’re out walking can add a bit of interest to a day out, and a lot of people just do it occasionally. But, if you get the bug, then there are all kinds of variations you can try such as geocoins, travel bugs (that get taken around the world), geocaching against the clock (a bit like orienteering), or doing it in teams.

Just like a good walk though, the fun is in the journey and the adventure, so why not give geocaching a go next time you plan a trip out and see what ‘treasure’ you can find and don’t forget to leave the geocachers greeting in the logbook TFTC, thanks for the cache.

Further information:
Geocaching.com – the official global GPS cache hunt site.
Geocaching Association of Great Britain (GAGB) - Geocacher’s Code of Conduct
UK Geocachers – What is geocaching and who are geocachers?