What to do if your car breaks down

There’s no worse feeling – your car starts making strange noises, loses power, then… stops. You try and try to restart it, all while other motorists get frustrated behind you.

What now?

Stay calm and warn others

Breathe – you’ve got this.

If you’ve broken down on a normal single-carriageway road, just follow these steps:

1. Start by putting your hazard lights on. This warns drivers around you and reduces the chance of following up a breakdown with an accident. Other motorists will (hopefully) be much more understanding once they see you’re not blocking the road on purpose.
2. Pull over as far to the left as you can if your car still has power and turn the steering wheel all the way to the left.
3. Put on high-visibility clothing if you have it. Check that it’s safe, then get out on the left hand side of your car.
4. If you have a warning triangle, put this out 45 metres behind your car – that’s about 60 big steps.
5. Call your breakdown cover provider for help. No breakdown cover? You can still call a breakdown service and pay to be rescued.

What to do if you break down on the motorway

The steps are a little different if you break down on the motorway:

1. Put your hazard lights on and drive to the hard shoulder if your car’s got power.
2. If you’ve reached the hard shoulder, put on your high visibility clothing, exit on the left side of the car and get behind the safety barrier.
3. Do not use a warning triangle. It’s too dangerous on the motorway.
4. Phone for help.

If you break down and can’t get to the hard shoulder, it’s a real emergency. Keep your seatbelt and hazard lights on and call 999. Don’t try to leave your car.

Smart motorways

Smart motorways don’t have a hard shoulder, so just move as far to the left as you safely can. If you’ve reached the left-hand lane, leave enough room to open your car door. Then you can call for help and wait for rescue behind the safety barrier.

If you’re not in the left lane, keep your seatbelt and hazard lights on and call 999. Do not leave the car.

Who to call for help

Hopefully you’ve got breakdown cover. If you do, call the provider’s helpline.

If you don’t have breakdown cover, you have a few options. They’re all expensive (sorry).

You can still call a national breakdown cover provider like the AA. For an additional fee you’ll be able to sign up to their service and have a rescue patrol sent out to you.

You can also contact local garages to see if they can send out a tow truck to recover your car.

Neither of these options will be cheap. It’s also pretty stressful trying to arrange help with a breakdown under pressure.

Be prepared

We hope you never have to deal with a breakdown. But it’ll be much easier if you’re prepared for it.

It might sound silly, but make sure you know where the hazard lights button is in your car. You (hopefully) don’t use it often, so it’s easy to forget, especially in a stressful situation.

It’s a good idea to keep an emergency kit in your car with:

• A warning triangle
• High-visibility vests
• Warm clothing
• Bottle of water
• Energy bars or chocolate

You should also make sure your car has a spare wheel or repair kit. Your breakdown provider will charge to help you if you have a flat tyre while you’re not carrying the right equipment to deal with punctures.

And if you don’t have breakdown cover, you might want to consider getting it.

Breakdown cover explained

Good news if you have a Marshmallow Plus car insurance policy – it includes AA Roadside Assistance breakdown cover as standard.

Marshmallow Original, Essential and Lightest customers can pay extra to add AA breakdown cover to their policies. And if you have Marshmallow Plus you can upgrade for more cover.

You have three levels of cover to choose from:

• Roadside Assistance – Help at the roadside in the UK, or recovery to a local garage.
• National Recovery – As above, plus recovery to anywhere in the UK and homestart.
• European – All the above in the UK and Europe, plus alternative travel and emergency accommodation.

Remember, it’s much more expensive to get breakdown assistance in an emergency if you don’t have cover – but it’s not just about the money. We want your UK motoring to be stress-free, so think about taking out breakdown cover to get help in a hurry when you really need it.