Road trips are a great way to spend your vacation, providing you and your family with some of the most unforgettable experiences. However, you can’t simply enter your car and be on the road again without a second thought. There are a lot of things that can go wrong on a road trip, so you need to prepare for it accordingly. Here are some of the cautionary tales to help you understand the importance of proper road trip planning and packing.

Forgetting to pack first aid kits or even basic medication can have significant negative consequences for your road trip. No matter if you’re camping at night or sleeping in your RV, it’s best to get a backup portable generator or at least have some thermal blankets at hand.

Make sure to plan your rest stops and get enough sleep to travel safely. As you will find out, lack of sleep can be no less deadly than driving under the influence. Grab a snack, start reading and learn a thing or two from these tales!

Cold Can Kill

It's a fact that the temperature outside can drop significantly at night, especially if you're traveling in colder climates. If you're planning to sleep outside, you need to have a way of dealing with these extreme temperatures besides relying on your vehicle. There are a few reasons for that.

Your vehicle can break down. Perhaps your engine doesn't want to start due to freezing temperatures. The cold is so extreme that even sleeping bags coupled with your winter clothing won't let you stay warm. You need to have a backup plan to avoid freezing to death.

That's where predator generators come in handy. You can use such a generator to heat water for instant hot beverages or even hot water bottles. These devices are widely available and can be purchased from most camping equipment stores.

If your vehicle is too small to pack a generator, or you simply don't have the money, get some thermal blankets. These blankets are great for keeping you and your passengers warm at night. They're light and easy to fold and store in the trunk, so you can always be prepared for a freezing night in the wild, away from civilization.

Always Pack Your Medicine

Road Trips are wonderful adventures, but they're somewhat more dangerous than your typical all-inclusive vacation in a luxury resort. You may not have access to a hospital or even a pharmacy on the spot. That's why you need to be prepared for any eventuality.

Bring first aid kits and know how to use them. In some cases, properly dressing wounds can make all the difference. Imagine you're traveling down the road in the middle of the Australian outback, and suddenly your tire gives in.

You lose control of your vehicle, and it ends up in a ravine. Fortunately, none of you has life-threatening injuries. However, you have a nasty gash on your forehead, and one of the passengers has pieces of the shattered glass embedded into their arm.

Even if you have a signal on your phone, it may still be hours before the nearest ambulance, or a helicopter arrives – after all, you're in the middle of nowhere. In this case, a first aid kit is a must. It has everything you need to provide limited aid to those injured in an accident.

You can use the tweezers to remove shards of glass from the passenger and gauze to bandage the wounds until the paramedics arrive. FAKs also have a variety of painkillers and anti-inflammatory meds that can help you reduce discomfort. Use the gloves to prevent any further contact with the blood to avoid infection.

Take Your Time

Many people are in a hurry on their road trips, especially if they have a schedule to keep. The problem is that you can't rush a road trip. While it may seem like an exciting adventure to drive cross-country in a week, you need to take your time.

You are crossing the country, which means you'll be dealing with all kinds of weather conditions, terrain, and traffic. Sometimes, there are no universal rules, either – each region might have its own speed limits, highways, and traffic laws. You need to take your time to familiarize yourself with the rules of the road and drive responsibly.

For example, both Poland and Germany are in the Schengen Area, meaning that crossing the border is simple and fast. However, Polish highways generally have a much stricter speed limit than German ones do, making it easy to get a hefty fine and cut your road trip adventure short.

A friend of mine didn't know that and had to pay hundreds of dollars for severe overspeeding. As such, he wasn't able to experience nearly as much of the European culture as he wanted to – he simply didn't have the money.

Always Plan Your Rest Stops

If you're planning a road trip, you need to know how to pace yourself. You can't run on adrenaline and coffee, you have to make sure you get enough rest and eat something during your adventure. Otherwise, you could end up in a situation where you're too tired to drive, but you still have to go on.

This can end tragically or at the very least, give you the scare of your life. A guy I know had the displeasure of experiencing that second situation. He wasn't able to get as much vacation time as he wanted and had to work on the same day his road trip was to begin.

By the time he sat behind a wheel, he was tired, sleepy, and jittery from all the coffee he had drunk earlier. For the first three hours, he was somehow able to drive, but that was to change shortly. The issue with coffee is that it comes down hard – and fast.

He was driving in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields and forests. It was then that he started dozing off. At first, he tried to keep his eyes open by focusing on the road ahead of him, but he was too tired to stay awake.

He momentarily lost control of the vehicle. A few seconds later, he opened his eyes, only to see a tree fast approaching his car. It was practically a miracle that he managed to avoid it. Shocked from his close call, he drove off the road, stopped the vehicle, and didn't resume driving until he had slept for 6 hours.

He doesn't know if it was God or simply luck that saved him – but since that fateful day, he doesn't do long-distance driving unless he had at least a few hours of sleep.

In Conclusion

As you can see, road trips need a lot of planning and preparation to be enjoyed safely. Depending on where you plan to go, you need to account for harsh clime and low temperatures. You need to have a backup way of making the temperature comfortable – either a predator generator with heaters or at least thermal blankets.

Always pack first aid kits and medicine and know how to use them. Finally, don't rush your road trip; it's not a race, you have plenty of time to visit all the places you want. As you can see from the examples above, driving tired might have grave consequences for you and your passengers. Hopefully, you'll learn from these tales and have a safe and fun road trip. Good luck!