While it’s best to simply stay off the roads when snow, sleet, and ice coat the streets, that’s not always an option–especially when you’re on a tight schedule. These snow driving tips will help you stay safe when mother nature clashes with your plans.

1. Stay warm

Before you consider anything specific about driving in snow or other winter weather, take the time to bundle up well and get your car comfortable. You may think of warmth as more a matter of comfort than practicality, but driving with your hands and feet cold doesn’t just feel bad, it makes you less able to react to unexpected events on the road.

2. Go slow

Some drivers feel nervous being out on snowy roads and thus drive faster than they ought to in a rush to get back to safety. Take your time and you’ll be far more likely to reach your destination without incident. Everything needs to take longer when you’re driving on snowy roads; drive slower, accelerate slower, stop slower, turn slower. More important than speed, perhaps, is agility; if you try to make agile motions on a snowy road, you’re far more likely to lose control.

3. Get familiar with your brakes

Your brakes are your best friend in any weather, so it’s always a good idea to know them intimately—but a snowy road makes it far more likely that you’ll find yourself faced with the importance of knowing whether you have anti-lock brakes or not. Read the key documentation for your car rentals so you’ll know what kind of brakes you’re looking at, then read specifics on safe handling of snow, ice, or other bad weather for that particular brake type. For most cars, that means trusting the ABS if you have it or pumping if you don’t.

4. Don’t use your parking brake

Your parking brake should be a last resort in any type of snowy, icy, or rainy weather because it’s far more likely to set you sliding than your normal brakes. The very problem we just discussed avoiding in using your normal brakes is all but inevitable if you’re forced to use the parking brake.

5. Don’t trust cruise control

Cruise control isn’t meant for slippery, unreliable roads, which snowy roads most certainly qualify as. Not only will cruise control struggle to maintain a stable speed on unreliable roads such as these, it may put you in serious danger in the attempt. There’s simply no reason to turn on cruise control in bad weather—period.

6. Control acceleration

Steady, stable, slow acceleration should be your goal on a winter road because it’s difficult to get the friction necessary for speedier acceleration or deceleration. If you get your tires spinning faster without the requisite friction with the road, you’re just going to end up breaking loose and sliding out of control. This is especially important when going through turns or any other maneuver which adds additional directions into the mix—in those circumstances, try not to change speed at all.

7. Avoid stops when feasible

It’s not always possible to avoid stops while staying in compliance with stop signs and traffic lights, but if you can manage rolling stops instead you’ll find it far easier to get back up to speed. This is closely tied to what we talked about in terms of acceleration on a snowy road earlier; going from zero to anything is going to take a while if you want to do it safely. If the roads are nasty enough, a full stop may even result in your car settling in and getting stuck.

8. Maintain momentum on hills

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of accelerating on a hill, especially if you feel your car start to slip, but that’s the absolute worst thing you can do. If you’re not going to get up a snowy hill with the momentum and acceleration you’re already applying, adding more gas is almost certainly not going to help—and it’s definitely going to add extra risk. Similarly, don’t try to slow down on a hill. It’s just as likely to put you into a slide and can lead you to the scary scenario of sliding down backwards.

9. Keep your distance from other cars

Remember, everything happens slower on a snowy road, including reactions from other drivers. You should triple or quadruple your normal distances for safe driving in snowy traffic. This is especially important when you take into account the simple fact that not everyone is going to be as good on the snow as you are—and there will be very little you can do about it if someone goes into a spin near you.