How the RAC deals with Christmas Breakdowns

The RAC says drivers are increasingly reluctant to even check their cars’ lights, levels and pressures, fearing such tasks to be beyond them.

People are driving fewer miles, too, which risks their car’s battery being insufficiently charged and failing when they need it most.

In 2019, long before the current inflation spiral, National Highways recorded almost a quarter of a million breakdowns on its network – a direct result, it said, of the UK’s ageing car population.

Between June and August this year, it recorded 62,000, suggesting 2023 could be even worse.

Putting the wind up drivers to the extent that visiting granny by car seems as challenging as Shackleton navigating the Southern Ocean by lifeboat is usual for the time of year, of course.

The media loves Christmas scare stories, and organisations such as breakdown companies probably sell more policies as a result.

That being so, how prepared are they for the conked-out cars they will have to fix this Christmas period?

How are the RAC's patrol vans prepped for Christmas?

To find out, we visited the RAC’s operational and technical headquarters in Walsall, where the firm trains its patrols.

If you like workshops, you will love the inside of an RAC patrol van.

To help new recruits make sense of the vast collection of tools that a patrol arrives with, on one wall of the training garage is an exploded view of a van comprised of the goodies it contains: everything from spanners to a selection of 12V batteries.

Things have moved on since this illustration was created, however, such that today the rear of a van is dominated by the so-called Rapid Deployment Trailer.

This can support a car’s front wheels as it’s towed, plus an ‘all wheels up’ four-wheeled version for when a car’s rear wheels are locked or it has suffered multiple punctures (common on our potholed roads).

Elsewhere, there’s a set of universal spare wheels with four or five studs and special washers so they can be fitted to around 80% of hubs (the RAC replaces 60 wheels a week).

Meanwhile, looking a bit like a defibrillator is a 5kW charger that, powered by the patrol van’s diesel engine, can quickly give an electric car’s main battery a boost sufficient to get it to a charger.

Add innumerable other remedies, including a clever tool that can unlock any wheel nut, exhaust-pipe joints and the get-you-home parts the RAC makes, such as gear linkages, and there are few reasons why it or any other well-prepared breakdown firm can’t get a stranded driver on their way again.

The RAC has 1600 vehicles, mostly Ford Transits with a gross train weight of almost five and a half tonnes and Isuzu D-Maxes with a GTW of seven tonnes.

Fewer are out and about on Christmas Day itself, but otherwise it’s all hands to the pump on the remaining days, when breakdowns tend to come in waves.

They are clearly tooled up for most situations, but one item above all strikes me as essential: the one marked ‘stay calm’.

“Especially at Christmas, people are more stressed than usual, to the extent that when their car breaks down, they may too,” says James Gibson, head of technical at the RAC.

“We train our patrols to defuse a situation and keep driver and passengers calm.

“Getting to their destination is their priority, which is why, if their car can’t be repaired and it isn’t too far away, we will take them or arrange a hire car. That really makes their Christmas.”