Photo: AFP
As we hit the heart of the winter season and temperatures drop to below freezing levels, the question arises whether or not you should let your car warm up before hitting the roads. While you may be able to get away with not warming your car up first, the older it is, the more risk you face. Ron Ananian, host of ‘The Car Doctor’ on the iHeartRadio app, talks about why he thinks you should wait a few minutes to let your car heat up before starting your commute.
“There’s a benefit to it… if you don’t warm up the car and there’s frost on the glass, and you’re going to work in the dark, how do you defrost the windshield,” Ananian told host Larry Mendte. “Now it’s a hazard; now you’re on the road, cars coming at you in the dark early morning glare from the headlights; you can’t see.”
Ananian says that the older your car is, the more risk you face not letting your car warm up: “You get in your 5 year or older vehicle and you get 5 blocks from the house and you find out that in the sub-zero temperature last night a heater hose snapped or a plastic fitting cracked… now the car is overheating and you’re 5 blocks or further from the house; when do you want to find out the car is broken?”
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