AMSS: rain, standing water, five-hour truck queues at Sid

You are driving to the coast, the sun is blazing, and then a downpour catches you out of nowhere twenty kilometres down the road. How dangerous is that, really? Dangerous enough for the Auto-Moto Association of Serbia to issue a warning to all drivers this morning.

AMSS flagged tougher driving conditions caused by changeable weather on the morning of July 15. The hazard it singled out was rain and the rising amount of water sitting on the road, with a risk of aquaplaning. In plain terms: at some point the tyre stops touching the asphalt and the car starts sliding across a film of water. The steering goes light, and at that moment you are not steering anything.

What is interesting is where the danger sits this season. For the past few days, the summer traffic story has been the queues heading to the sea and what time to set off. Today AMSS sees the problem not in the congestion but in the road surface itself.

Why is a July downpour worse than it looks?

Because nobody expects it. The forecast for July 15 was mostly sunny with local showers and thunderstorms, and highs between 31 and 34 degrees. In practice that means dry for most of the day, then a few minutes of heavy rain out of nowhere, then sun again.

That combination is the worst one going. The driver is in summer mode, cruise control is on, the following distance is whatever it was on dry asphalt, and the surface changes in thirty seconds. The first minutes of rain are also the most slippery, because dust and oil on the road mix with water before heavier rain washes them away.

Three things help immediately, with no equipment at all. Lift off the throttle before you reach the standing water, not while you are in it. Leave more distance than feels necessary, because braking distances stretch on a wet surface. And switch off cruise control, because it cannot feel the tyres losing grip, it only adds throttle.

If the car does start to float, your reflex is the wrong one. Do not brake hard and do not jerk the wheel. Come off the throttle, hold your line and give it a moment for the tyres to bite again. It sounds obvious right up until it happens to you at 120 kilometres an hour.

Trucks are stuck, passenger cars are moving

The second half of this morning’s report is the border, and there the picture splits in an unusual way.

Freight traffic leaving the country is waiting seriously long. It is five hours at Sid, four each at Batrovci and Kelebija, and two hours at Horgos. At the peak of the summer season, those numbers say that goods heading west out of Serbia are moving slowly today.

Passenger vehicles, on the other hand, are getting through almost without stopping. The only hold-up is at Presevo, and that is up to 20 minutes. There are no delays at the other crossings. Toll stations inside the country saw no significant delays through the morning either.

The message is clear and slightly counterintuitive. If you are setting off today, the border probably will not be your problem. The stretch of road between you and the border will be.

Our recommendation is the dullest one possible: leave earlier than you planned, and count on a downpour that is not in the forecast for your town but for the one you are driving through. Fifteen spare minutes at the start is cheaper than every other option.

So when a downpour catches you out on the open road, do you slow down straight away, or wait to see how the car behaves first?