Think This Guy Left Home Unprepared? Get Your MacGyver On and Gear Up Your Vehicle Safety Kit

With the weather cooling down, and winter approaching in about 6 weeks, it's time to plan your vehicle safety kit--the gear you'll need in the event you get stuck on the highway, on a country road, or, worse yet, fall prey to a vehicle collision. Yes, jumper cables are important, but that's not all.

Here is a list--not a comprehensive list by any means, but a place to get started if you don't have a vehicle safety kit, or, if you have one already, a source of new information.

Gear For Your Vehicle Safety Kit

1. Food: Having to shovel yourself out of a ditch, or fix a tire, will tax you physically. If you have some energy bars on hand, you can quickly fuel up rather than having a search and rescue crew pull your fainted body out of a snow bank. 

2. Water: Plastic bottles might be the bane of enviro-activists everywhere, but they are good for subzero temperatures given that they won't break like glass will. The key here is to change the bottles every six months.

3. Blanket and layers of clothing: A blanket might be fine at -5, but if you're stuck in -30, you'll need to layer up. Having your snowmobile pants in the trunk and a toque or two, plus a pair of boots (if you insist on wearing your dress shoes to work) will be important.

4. First Aid Kit: This can be as light as a bunch of band-aids, gauze, polysporin, and rubbing alcohol, or as detailed as the following:

• Good Flashlight
• True Utilities Fire Stash
• Duct Tape (you can wrap some around an old credit card for portability)
• Gauze--at least 2-3 rolls
• Electrical Tape
• Antiseptic swabs
• Burn dressing
• Large sharp tweezers
• Bandaids in all assortments and sizes
• First-Aid booklet
• Fresnel lens (a very fine lens that helps you see very small wounds)
• Dr. Schole's Moleskin sheets: for blisters
• Tylenol, Advil, Aspirine

5. Candle in a deep can and matches: In the event you didn't go for the fancy $50 True Utilities Fire Stash, a simple lighter will do as well as some back up matches. Why the deep can? First to keep the wind from blowing out the candles, and second in the event your car is stuck and you need to melt some snow.

6. Whistle

7. Roadmaps

8. Portable cellphone charger

9. Sand, Salt, Kitty-Litter: This stuff can help you melt snow under your tires, or give you some traction to get out of an icy situation. 

10. Anti-freeze/Windshield Wiper Fluid: Nothing worse than your windshield whitening out under an inch-thick layer of road salt and having no wiper fluid. 

11. Jumper Cables

12. Fire Extinguisher

13. Warning Light, Road Flares, Pylons: These will help you get the attention you need, as well as signal to people on the highway that you're on the shoulder. Many accidents occur when people are pulled over on the side of the highway and get run down by an unsuspecting motorist.

14. Multi-Tool: McGyver fantasy stuff, something like a Leatherman Skeletool CX, or a product by Bear Grylls. Following the McGyver theme, a good Swiss Army Knife will do as well. Make sure, however, that whatever tool you get that it has a very very sharp serrated or partially serrated knife in the event you have to cut through a seat belt.