Road trips are a joyous way to travel. We all love the adventure of leaving behind our homes and hitting the highway to a far destination. When it comes to roaming around Europe there is no better way to enjoy your travels. However, while such trip into the unknown is famed for its elements of surprise and excitement, it’s important to stay a tiny bit on the safe side. Here are a few tips that will help you avoid arrest perhaps, or from ending up broke without the money to get back home.
Take a Security Debit Card With You
Now this is rather a double edged sword type piece of advice. Generally, the more money you take with you on holiday, the more money you’re likely to spend. This is regardless of how disciplined we believe ourselves to be. However, a safety net full of money will do a traveller much good to prevent them from running out of funds.
So how can we ensure we don’t end up needlessly spending our safety money on some lavish unnecessity? The answer is we can’t. However we can reduce the risk of us spending this safety money, through carrying it in the form of a debit card. This will make the money less readily available than if it was in cash; with ATM machines sometimes difficult to access while travelling and shops abroad usually refusing to accept British debit cards.
Keep Spare Petrol in the Boot
A most unfortunate situation to be stuck in while on any road trip, is to run out of petrol while on the road and far from a petrol station. Many of the roads you’ll be driving on will be extremely long and without a petrol station near. Therefore while you might think you have sufficient gas in the tank, you may just be on course to breaking down in the middle of nowhere.
Keep as many gallons of petrol in the boot as space renders possible in order to stop such a calamitous situation happening to you.
United Kingdom
If you’re looking to rent a car to get around Europe, make sure you get it from a trusted British car rental company. This is not to say that foreign car hire businesses cannot be trusted, while British ones can.
There are a few guaranteed trustworthy and professional vehicle rental companies such as WhipCar for example who offer its users a wide choice of hire cars in UK from a variety of sources See the video below to find out how it works.
Therefore you need to make sure you choose one within the country your home country, in order to deal with them with limited complications in the advent of you being ripped off or swindled.
Heed the Speed Limits
This piece of advice could prevent you from ending up having to pay a hefty fine, or even spending the night in jail. Worse still, it could prevent you from driving into a car crash! As any driver will know, different roads – and different parts of roads – have different speed limits.
It is therefore vital that you remain diligent to road signs indicating speed limits. With policeman in Europe often not being too sympathetic to Brits, this rule is of utmost importance.
Heed the Drink Limits
The other road limits you should pay heed to concerns alcohol. Know the drink limits of different countries and areas, for they differ between each. For example, while you can cruise after drinking a bit of booze in France; the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and other Eastern European countries operate a zero tolerance policy.
Ignoring this little rule could definitely end up putting you in jail.
Mark Craig is a British freelance writer by night and mechanic by day.