Experts from car sales platform MOTORS revealed the potentially disastrous risks of improperly jump-starting your car.
As the temperature drops, motorists are more likely to find themselves stranded with a flat battery, since the cold reduces its capability to hold charge.
With the weather turning wintry, knowing how to do a jump-start safely is vital.
In basic terms, it involves using another car with a working battery to give your ignition system a shot of power to start up via a set of jump cables.
However, they’re are a couple of vital errors to avoid.
First of all, make sure you connect and disconnect the cables in the right order.
Always connect the red lead to the positive terminals first before attaching the black lead to the negative terminal and earthing point.
The locations of these parts can be found in your owner’s manual, which will have a section on jump starts specific to your motor that you should read before attempting one.
When disconnecting the cables it is essential to do so in reverse order, starting with the negative cable and then the positive cable.
And always make sure that the engine of the working car is off while connecting and disconnecting the cables.
Failing to do so could severely damage your car’s electronics or even result in electrocution.
Secondly, you must remove all jewellery and loose-fitting clothing like scarves or baggy jumpers.
Steven Edwards, motoring editor at MOTORS, explained: “Loose-fitting clothing like a scarf or tie risks being caught in the moving parts of the engine while rings or metal jewellery could make contact with the terminals on the battery causing a spark or in the most serious of cases the battery to explode.
“Should you be unfortunate enough to need to jump start your car, take the time to compose yourself and think safety first.”
Finally, there is an art to when and when not to run your car during a jump start.
Turning it on too soon could damage the electronics due to a power surge.
Likewise, once your car is powered up again you shouldn’t just switch it off immediately as this will undo all your hard work.
Even a nip to the shops doesn’t give enough time for the alternator to restore enough charge to the battery so you don’t have to perform a second jump start.
Instead, make sure that you are only using a jump start for a journey of at least 30 minutes so you give the car time to recover the power it needs.
On the flip side of that, if your car shows any sign of damage or won’t start after a couple of attempts, it’s best to give up and book your car in for a battery replacement rather than potentially causing costly damage.