Over many years, and countless service calls in Tennessee, we’ve learned that when a car doesn’t turn over, the likely culprit, 9-times-out-of-10, is a dead car battery.
When it happens to you and your away from home and you don’t have a jumper cable – and/or a car to jump your vehicle, there’s a few steps any wayward driver should take to get going again.
Here’s some recommendations…
Parked Car Won’t Start
If your car is currently parked and you are trying to start it but it doesn’t seem to start, your battery might not actually be dead but only discharged. There are different things that can drain your car’s battery like forgetting to turn off the lights, an electrical problem, improper charging, or defective alternator just to name a few. When the car battery is drained, one of the things you can do is to charge it.
If you have a battery charger, you can use it on your car battery for some time. You can also try to jumpstart the car. However, you should take precautionary measures when doing this. You shouldn’t just do it. You should know how to really do it before you attempt to do so. Jumpstarting the car can be very dangerous and risky.
If you don’t have a car battery charger and don’t have another car available to help you jumpstart your vehicle, the best thing to do is to call a roadside assistance service provider. Battery boost service can cost around $50 to $100 depending on the company you call.
The good thing about calling roadside assistance service is that if the jumpstart doesn’t work, you can still hire them to check on your car and find a solution to your car’s problem.
The drained battery may not be the only culprit when your car fails to start. It can also be due to other car parts such as a faulty ignition switch. The roadside assistance company may also decide to tow your vehicle if they can’t repair it and if it needs to be in the shop.
Car Battery Dies While Driving
In the event that your car battery dies while you’re on the road, here are important steps that you should take:
- Drive the car to the side of the road – Even if the car battery dies, it is still possible to drive it to the side of the road until it stops. If it is difficult to slow down on its own, you can use the brakes once you get to the safe area. Be calm and don’t panic so that you can think clearly about what to do. If you can’t don’t park in the way of other drivers so that you don’t cause a disruption in case you can’t start the car right away.
- Try to start the car again – You can try to restart the car and you might get it to run again. However, that doesn’t mean you have to ignore that there is a problem. The fact that the car battery died while you were driving means that there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
- Turn on your emergency flashers – This will help alert other drivers that you are having problems with your vehicles. It also makes you more visible to other people on the road so that they don’t accidentally crash on you.
- Check your battery connections – Sometimes, your car battery can die on the road while you are driving because the connections are just loose. You can check them and figure out if that is the problem.
- Call for help – If you the connections are good, there might be something wrong with your car that needs to be addressed. You can’t do anything else on the side of the road so you need to call on roadside services or towing services. They may jumpstart the vehicle or figure out what is wrong with it. Sometimes, it isn’t really the battery that is the problem. It can be the other parts of the car like the alternator or the other electrical parts. With this problem, the roadside assistance and towing company can only bring your car to the shop to have it better checked and repaired.
Check out our next article on reason why a rapid response roadside assistance company matters…
