Broken down on the highway: the 7-step safety checklist
A highway breakdown is one of the few situations where the wrong instinct is genuinely dangerous. Standing in the wrong place for ninety seconds is a bigger risk than whatever went wrong with the car. Work through these seven steps in order and you will be safe long before help arrives.
1. Get off the travel lane while you still have momentum
The moment you feel a loss of power, a blowout or a warning light that matters, put your hazard lights on and start moving right. Do not brake hard in a live lane. A car that is still rolling can be steered onto the shoulder; a car that has stopped in a lane cannot. Aim for the widest piece of shoulder you can reach, and get as far from the white line as the verge allows — ideally with all four wheels past it.
If there is an exit, a rest area or a wide gravel pull-off within reach, take it. Coasting an extra 300 feet to a safer spot is almost always worth it. If the engine has died completely, remember you usually keep a few seconds of power steering assistance and one or two firm brake applications. Use them for steering, not for stopping early.
2. Make the car impossible to miss
Hazard lights stay on until the tow truck or mechanic arrives. At night or in rain, fog or snow, add your parking lights and, if you have one, an interior dome light so the silhouette of the car reads as occupied rather than abandoned.
If you carry a warning triangle or road flares, set them out only if you can do it without stepping into traffic. On a straight, open shoulder, place the first marker roughly 100 feet behind the car, and a second one 200 to 300 feet back on a fast highway. On a blind bend or a crest, place them before the bend so drivers see the warning while they still have sight lines. If the shoulder is too narrow to do this safely, skip it. No marker is worth walking in a live lane for.
3. Decide whether to stay in the car
This is the step people get wrong most often. On a highway, the default answer is stay inside, seat belt fastened, doors locked. The passenger cabin is a crash structure; the shoulder is not. Getting out to look at the engine feels productive and is the single most dangerous thing you can do on a motorway shoulder.
There are three exceptions where you should get out immediately and move well away from the road, uphill and upwind if possible:
- You smell fuel, or see smoke or flames.
- The car is stopped in a live lane and traffic is approaching at speed.
- The shoulder is so narrow that the car is still partly in the lane.
When you do exit, everyone leaves through the doors on the passenger side, away from traffic, and gathers behind the barrier or up the embankment — never in front of the car, and never between the car and oncoming traffic.
4. Fix your exact location before you call
"Somewhere on the interstate" costs you twenty minutes. Before you dial, find one of these:
- The nearest mile marker or emergency reference post.
- The last exit number you passed, plus your direction of travel.
- Your GPS coordinates — every phone map app will show them, and it is the fastest thing to read out.
Direction of travel matters as much as the number. Northbound and southbound shoulders on a divided highway can be twenty minutes apart for a tow truck that has to find a turnaround.
5. Call for help — and describe the symptom, not the diagnosis
Tell the dispatcher what the car actually did: it lost power gradually, the temperature gauge went to red, there was a bang and now the steering pulls left. Resist the urge to guess at the cause. The symptom decides which truck gets sent. "Overheating" gets a mechanic with coolant and a pressure tester; "won't turn over" gets a jump pack or a battery; "shredded tyre" gets someone with the right jack for your vehicle. A wrong guess sends the wrong truck and doubles your wait.
Also say up front how many people are in the car, whether there are children, pets or anyone with a medical condition, and whether the car is fully off the road. That last detail is what moves a job up the queue.
6. Verify the truck before you hand over your keys
When a truck pulls up, confirm it is the one that was sent for you. You should be able to match at least two of these:
- The company name on the door against the name your dispatcher gave you.
- The driver's name.
- The job or reference number for your call.
A legitimate driver expects to be asked and will have all three. If a tow truck arrives that you did not call — and on busy highways this does happen — you are under no obligation to accept the tow. Stay in the car with the doors locked, and call your own provider to confirm before you agree to anything. Never sign a blank authorisation form, and get the tow destination and the price in writing before the car goes on the deck.
7. Prepare for the wait
Most roadside waits are between twenty and sixty minutes, longer in bad weather when everyone is calling at once. Keep your phone alive — drop the screen brightness, and if you have a power bank, use it rather than running the engine. In cold weather, stay in the car with your coat on and run the engine for ten minutes in every thirty for heat, but only after checking that the exhaust pipe is clear of snow, mud or grass. A blocked tailpipe pushes carbon monoxide back into the cabin.
In heat, crack two windows on opposite sides for cross-draught, get the kids out of car seats if the cabin is climbing, and drink whatever water you have. Do not leave anyone in the car and walk for help. A stationary car with hazards on is far easier for both traffic and your rescuer to see than a person on foot.
Put the checklist somewhere you will actually find it
Under pressure, nobody remembers seven steps. Take thirty seconds now: save your roadside provider's number as a contact, put a warning triangle and a torch in the boot, and check that your spare is inflated. The whole point of a checklist is that it works on a bad day, at night, in the rain, when you are rattled — and that only happens if the preparation is already done.