Winterizing a car isn’t complicated, but it needs to be done. Cold air doesn’t fill tires as well as warm air, so you’ll need to top them up. Your windshield wiper fluid should be the de-icing kind. If you expect to drive often in snow or ice, you really should get snow tires installed. And if your battery has been giving you trouble, replace it before winter really gets going—a battery that only works OK in summer is guaranteed to die on you on cold winter mornings.

While you’re at it, familiarize yourself with your car’s safety features. Does it have a traction control system? Is it so old that it doesn’t have antilock brakes? If you have all-wheel drive, how do you activate it?

You can get kid-sized shovels at hardware stores and grocery stores. Grab one, and keep it in your trunk. It will be an enormous help if you don’t have a garage, or if you need to dig your car out after a long day at work or an evening at a party.

In addition to that shovel, make sure you have a good ice scraper/brush and a bag of sand or kitty litter. The sand is not to weigh your car down (unless you have a rear-wheel-drive car, in which case, load up your trunk with every heavy thing you can find)—it’s to sprinkle around your wheels to give them some traction if you’re stuck in a snowbank.

Besides snow-clearing gear, you’ll also want to keep a few things around for emergencies. Make sure you have a blanket to huddle under, in case you’re stuck in the car for any length of time. Extra mittens and hats can help, too. Make sure you’ve got jumper cables, a flashlight, and all the usual road safety stuff. Check that spare tire (or tire repair kit) and be sure it’s ready for use, just in case.

Normally, “leaving the house” and “getting on the road” happen at basically the same time. But if your car is out in the cold, you should allot yourself a good 15 minutes or so to dig it out.

First, you’ll want to shovel a path to the car, brush the snow off the driver’s door, and get inside so you can turn on the engine and front and rear defrosters. Next, shovel any snow that will get in the way of pulling out.

Then, brush the snow off the car. Clean the wheel wells, the roof, your license plate, and your headlights. Make sure the squirty nozzles for the windshield wiper fluid aren’t under packed snow. And finally, scrape the ice off the windshield. This is why we turned on the car at the start: By the time you get to this stage, it’s probably already melting and sliding off. If it’s not, score it with the ridges on the back of your scraper.

When you’re in a hurry, it’s tempting to just clear the windows and call it “good enough.” But a thick layer of snow or ice on your roof (or hood or trunk) can be dangerous to you or other drivers. Powdery snow will blow off and annoy the driver behind you; bigger chunks of ice and wet snow can fly off and crash into other drivers’ windshields, which can be a real safety hazard. At highway speeds, these are sometimes called “ice missiles.”

What if you can’t get into your car because the door, or the lock, is frozen shut? Whatever you do, do not pour boiling water on the door—that can cause the window to shatter. Lukewarm water is OK, though. We have more tips here on preventing these kinds of freezes, and on dealing with them when they happen. Windshield de-icer is your friend here.

Think of this as a weather indicator: If you park your car in the apartment lot and everybody else’s wipers are up, that’s a good sign that an ice storm is on the way. Some people leave their windshield wipers up to prevent them from getting frozen to the windshield in the morning.

Should you put your wipers up? While this hack does often work to keep your wipers clean, it’s also hard on the wiper springs and doesn’t save you much time, since you’ll have to de-ice the windshield anyway.

Your windshield’s defroster is also a defogger. We have more here on the exact settings to use, but the short answer is you want to blow the heat on your windshield full blast, and turn the air conditioner on. Yes, you can do them at the same time. If you have a button that defrosts the windshield, it probably does all of these things at once without you having to turn all the different switches.

If you’re used to getting into the car with your coat already on, you’ll probably think nothing of having your kiddo do the same. But infant car seats are only safe when used with normal clothing, not puffy coats. That extra layer of floof is significant enough to change the way the seatbelt protects your kid in an accident. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends dressing little ones in layers so you can buckle them in and then put a coat or blanket on top. Never use a car seat cover that goes under the straps or under your baby.

Drivers wisely slow down when roads are slippery, but this means traffic can slow to a crawl. You may also find that certain routes are impassible; maybe more people are on the main road because the hilly side roads are big ol’ ice slicks that haven’t been plowed yet.

This means you should allow extra time when you’re out in the snow, and it means you should be even better prepared than usual. Keep your gas tank full. In the worst case, you may end up in a massive traffic jam; those blankets and that emergency kit could come in handy.

When it comes to the actual driving, the biggest thing to know is that your tires’ ability to grip the road is very limited in winter conditions, and you have to drive with that in mind. An analogy that may help is to think of traction as something you can “spend.” Accelerating, braking, and steering all require traction.

With that in mind, plan out your path so that you are only doing one of these things at a time. If you’re coming up to a turn, don’t expect to hit the brakes and turn the wheel at the same time. Carefully slow down before you get to the turn, and then while you are turning, “spend” all your traction on the turn. After the turn, straighten out the wheel before you accelerate.

If you drive long enough, you will lose traction at some point, and you should know what to do. You may have heard the advice to “turn into the skid,” but what this really means is to point the car the direction you want to go. If you were turning when you started to skid, you’ll want to straighten out the wheel.

Next up, braking. Modern cars will activate their antilock braking system (ABS), which will feel like the brake pedal is juddering under your foot. Keep your foot on the brake—the car is doing the right thing. If you are driving a very old car, you’ll need to pump the brakes yourself: push, release, push, release, etc.

On the other hand, if you’re driving along and everything is fine, but your car’s traction control system lights up and beeps at you, that means it’s reducing power to the wheels to get you more traction. Help it out by letting up on the gas.

If you feel like your winter driving skills are a bit rusty, find a big empty parking lot where you can practice skidding and recovering. If you’re teaching your teenager to drive, make sure to get them some parking lot time, too.

So you’re driving along, and your tires are gripping the road underneath you. Great! But don’t count on it staying that way. Turn off your cruise control, and keep an eye out for places that may have black ice—ice that you don’t see, but that will suddenly leave you sliding along the highway. If you’ve ever seen signs saying “bridge freezes before road,” this is what they’re talking about. Don’t drive over bridges at high speed in the winter.

If the roads are bad or visibility is poor, you might think it’s a good idea to follow a plow truck. But this is actually making life harder on yourself: The trucks push slush around, and they often have a salt dispenser on the back that will spray you if you’re too close. Instead, keep your distance—or better yet, don’t go out until you know the roads have been plowed and the salt has had time to melt the snow.

You can be the world’s best winter driver, and there will still be times it’s safest to cancel plans and stay home. Remember that even if you are good at driving at snow, and even if your car is properly winterized, plenty of other bozos will be out there with bald tires and a Florida license.

Pay attention to the forecast before you head out—not only for what the weather will be doing when you head out, but also what’s expected around the time you’ll be returning home. If freezing rain is forecast, that’s particularly dangerous: The roads will start out wet, and then turn to ice. If a snowstorm is coming, pay attention to how many inches are expected. The deeper the snow, the longer the roads will go before they can be fully cleared. It’s better to be home cozy and safe than to get in an accident.