Emergency Supplies for Car Revisited

Today's Louisville Courier-Journal showed an article about how to prepare your car for winter driving. They included an article about checking your car's anti-freeze levels and quality, the oil levels, keep the gasoline in the tank above 50% capacity to avoid freezing, air pressure and tread condtion, battery condition, and inspect the belts.

They recommend the following for storing in your vehicle:

• Blanket or sleeping bag
• Warm clothing
• Small can of waterproof matches
• high calorie food
• fully charged cell phone
• shovel
• container of sand or cat litter
• booster cables
• flashlight with extra batteries
• water container
• tow rope
• first aid kit
• tool kit
  

I like the idea of tow cable and the sleeping bag. I sometimes carry my sleeping bag. I would add an emergency radio. The radio I have seen in the past is from Grundig or Elan (might have those names spelled wrong). The radio has a dynamo that you crank to charge it up. It has an LED light which saves battery energy and a cell phone charger port which can be really handy.

I am wondering if there is a product that people in the car in Oregon could have used to help air searchers see their vehicle better. Maybe a flashing LED or strobe that can be powered from a solar charger. I looked on the web and there seems to be some products out there using electronics that stand out. Maybe cars should carry an emergency dynamo for charging cell phones and batteries.

Small airplanes carry some sort of beacon device that goes off when they crash or something like this. Maybe cars can have this too. Of course, cars can with the Onstar system and maybe this a reason to get such a system that goes off when the car is in an accident or stranded.