Important safety items to have in your glove compartment in case of an emergency
The glove compartment is often overlooked for its importance. Most people just throw trash and receipts or such in there. Many people never use it – and some don’t even know if they have an owner’s manual or what it is. Take a moment now to open your glove compartment and be honest. Does it have trash, napkins, ketchup packets from McDonalds, etc… in it? Or is it neatly organized with your car’s registration and insurance on top? The glove compartment is not a trash receptacle. Get a plastic bag and use it for that. The glove box is an essential place for necessary items.
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Some necessary items to keep handy in your glove box are the above mentioned registration and insurance. Who wants to have to dig through years of accumulated junk and trash to find your license and registration at a traffic stop? Worse yet, as can be seen on popular TV shows like America’s dumbest criminals and similar, some people put their drugs, guns and more in the glove box and forget about them until a cop asks for their registration – whoops, now you get a felony drug or gun possession charge.
Other important items are, of course, the vehicle owners manual. Many times when you buy a used car the car may not have come with one. That’s fine, go online and buy one – it’s that important. It will explain to you everything from installing child safety seats to locations of items like the car battery, alternator and more (in some cars like the 199 Oldsmobile Aurora the car battery is located under the rear seat and to replace it you must remove the rear seat). The owner’s manual can explain a lot of items on your car and even has important sections on emergency driving and changing a tire (do you know if you have a spare tire and where it and the tools are? If not then get out your owners manual).
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Some items will be more important depending on your circumstances – do you have a diabetic child or someone in your family that will be using your car or riding in it that has special medical requirements? If so, it is vitally important that you keep a list of medical problems and required treatments and medicines along with doctors numbers and such in the event of an accident. You may even want to keep your Do Not Resuscitate DNR) order in there if you have one. Police know to look in the glove box for important information like this.
For your own sake it is also very important to keep a disposable camera in your glove box (a cell phone with a camera or a digital camera is good, but will you always have it with you?) Basically, a disposable camera will be very important if you have an accident to help show who’s fault it was. It will help record evidence for later use. I, myself, have found this extremely important. My wife was at a local grocery store when a local teenager rushing to take a college test backed into her car. The accident was clearly the teenager’s fault and there were witnesses to this, but the police officers writeup left it looking kind of unclear and the photographs I took were what really made the teenagers insurance company payup and take care of everything. Sometimes that’s what it takes and usually these things always happen when you least expect them to.
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Some other important items are paper and pen – you need to be able to write down people’s names, phone numbers, drivers license numbers, license plate numbers ( in case of a hit and run or similar), etc… It is also important to have a flash light in case of a night time accident or breakdown. You can keep this item in your trunk in an emergency kit, but it is better to keep it in the glove box as it is more likely to be regularly checked once a year for fresh batteries and to make sure it works. The last thing you need is to be stranded in the middle of nowhere at night and your flashlight is bad.
Another good idea would be to store some healthy snacks like granola bars and cheese crackers in the glove box. This is vital for diabetics as they never know when a sudden drop or rise in their blood sugar could necessitate such snacks and items. It is also important for non diabetics, especially late at night or in the middle of a snowy winter where breakdowns or getting stuck could mean hours or even days before rescue.
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An item I have found very helpful to have on hand is a small bottle of hand sanitizer. You should use this for your kids when ever you pick them up from school, on the way home from after school events, after shopping, etc… This will help keep sicknesses and such to a minimum. Besides who wants to deal with the flu or a terrible head cold unnecessarily?
There are more items like extra trash bags and a comb, etc… But you can see my point that the glove box is a very helpful item when used correctly and kept in an orderly fashion. Don’t use it as a waste receptacle or as I once saw as a large ash tray – yes I once saw a car that the glove box was filled with cigarette butts and ash and it stunk horribly. Use your glove box correctly and it will be there to serve you when you need it.
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