FOR EVERY DRIVER OVER 55 WHO DREADS THE FIRST FROSTY MORNING OF THE YEAR
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I spent 28 years rescuing drivers with flat batteries. Here's the 8-second habit I kept when I retired, and why I'll never sit in a freezing car park waiting 3 hours for a van again

A flat battery is the number 1 reason patrols get called out in Britain. On the RAC's busiest day ever, around 12,000 drivers needed rescuing in 24 hours. Nearly every one of them could've been on their way before the kettle boiled.
By Colin Bradshaw, retired breakdown patrolman, Doncaster. Updated Wednesday 14 October 2026
You know the sound.

Not the engine. The click.

That flat, hollow click when you turn the key on a cold morning and the car does nothing at all. You try again. Slower this time. Then nothing. Then the cold starts creeping in through the door seal and it dawns on you: you're not going anywhere.

I've heard that sound more times than just about anyone alive. For 28 years I was the bloke who turned up afterwards. In a van. Usually a fair bit later than you'd have liked.

So take it from me: the thing that leaves drivers over 55 stranded every winter isn't bad luck, and it isn't an old car. It's a precise, predictable bit of chemistry that happens inside every car battery in Britain on the same few mornings each year. I'll show you exactly what it is in a minute.

And I'll show you the 8-second habit I kept from the job. The one thing I won't drive without now. The thing that means that click will never again cost you a morning, a £100 callout, or 3 hours in a car park with the heater off.

But first I need to tell you about the day I decided to write this.
Me, my Astra and the box that replaced the van. Pauline took this on our drive in Doncaster at 7.10 one January morning, in her dressing gown, telling me to hurry up.

8 drivers a minute: the morning I realised breakdown cover can't save you from the queue

Monday 12 December 2022. You might remember it. No snow, just that hard, dry cold that sat on the whole country for a week.

By lunchtime the control room had stopped giving us estimated times. That day the RAC logged around 12,000 breakdowns in 24 hours, the most in its history. 8 drivers a minute. More than the Beast from the East (1).

I did 19 jobs that day. 16 of them were batteries.

The one I still think about was in a supermarket car park in Rotherham at ten to five. A lady of about 70 in a silver hatchback. Engine dead, hazard lights fading, 2 bags of shopping on the back seat and 4% left on her phone.

She'd been waiting since half past one.

She had breakdown cover. She'd done everything right. And it had still taken us 3 hours and 20 minutes to get to her, because there were hundreds of people ahead of her in the queue.

It took me 40 seconds to start her car.

40 seconds. After 3 hours and 20 minutes.

That's the bit nobody mentions when you renew your cover every year. The cover's real, the van's real, the patrol's real. But on the mornings you actually need it, so is the queue. The AA goes out to more than 270,000 breakdowns in an average January (2). The RAC's own target is 60 minutes, and in the first week of January this year drivers on its own forum were posting texts quoting 3 to 6 hours. One chap stuck in Lancashire at half past 3 was given a window of 7.30pm to 10.30pm (3).

And it's not the cars that pack up on those mornings. It's the batteries. Which brings me to the bit hardly anyone understands.

Your battery doesn't die in winter. It gets caught out. Here's the 35% nobody warned you about

A car battery doesn't store electricity the way a bucket stores water. It makes electricity, on demand, from a chemical reaction between lead plates and acid.

Cold slows chemistry. Every schoolkid knows that. What almost no driver knows is by how much.

At 0°C, an ordinary car battery can only give you about 65% of the cranking power it had in September. At minus 18, it's down to 40% (4).

And at exactly the same moment, the engine oil's gone thick as treacle, so the starter motor needs up to twice the current to turn the engine over (5).

Half the power. Twice the demand. Same morning.

That's the whole story of winter breakdowns in one line. Your battery isn't old, or faulty, or neglected. It's a 4-year-old battery doing what every 4-year-old battery does when the thermometer drops: giving up in the exact same week as everyone else's.

Which is why the first working Monday after Christmas is the busiest day of the year for patrols. The RAC's even got a name for it. Flat Battery Monday (6).
What the cold does to an ordinary battery, and why the engine asks for more at exactly the wrong moment.
Once I'd properly understood that, I stopped thinking of a jump start as an emergency. I started thinking of it as something you should be able to do yourself, on your own drive, in the time it takes to put your seatbelt on.

Trouble is, every option you've ever been given for that is broken.

Jump leads need a second car. A callout needs a van. A new battery costs £200 and buys you 4 winters

Jump leads. I carried a set for 28 years and I haven't touched them since. You need a second car parked nose to nose, a driver willing to stop, and the nerve to connect live cables in the right order with cold hands. Get the order wrong on a modern car and you can fry an engine control unit that costs more than the car's worth.

A callout. If you've got cover it's free, and on a quiet Tuesday in May you'll wait 40 minutes. On the mornings you actually break down, you'll wait with the other 400. No cover? A single callout usually starts at around £100, plus £1 a mile if you need towing (7), and Which? found breaking down without cover can top £400 (8).

A new battery. Sensible, if yours really is finished. But a fitted battery on a modern car is usually £150 to £250, well over £200 for the stop-start type in most cars built since 2015, and it doesn't change the chemistry. 4 winters from now you're back where you started.
This is what "covered" looks like at ten past 4 on a December afternoon. Heater off, to save what's left of the battery.
What I wanted was something that made me my own patrolman. No second car. No queue. No stranger. Something my wife could use on her own, in the dark, without ringing me.

Took me 28 years to find it. And it had been sat in my colleagues' gloveboxes the whole time.

The 8-second habit I kept from the job, and what the patrols quietly keep in their own gloveboxes

It's called StartSure. It's a lithium jump starter about the size of a paperback, and it does the one thing that used to need a van.

You pop the bonnet. Red clamp on the red terminal, black clamp on the black. Back in the car, turn the key.

8 seconds. That's the whole habit. I've done it in the dark, in the rain, in my slippers on a Sunday morning, and it hasn't let me down once.
Red to red, black to black. The screen lights up, you turn the key. That's it.
Inside the box is a bank of what the makers call ColdBurst cells: high-discharge lithium cells that let go of a 4,000 amp burst when you ask for it, enough to turn over any petrol engine up to 10 litres and diesels up to 6 litres (9). In plain English, every car on your street, plus the Range Rover on the corner.

And because those cells are rated from minus 30°C to plus 65°C, the box doesn't care what the thermometer says. It'll start a car at minus 15 exactly like it does in July, which is rather the point.

Now, if you're thinking "I could never do that myself", read the next bit carefully, because it's the reason I let my wife use it.

Why you can't get it wrong, even if you've never opened a bonnet in your life

The clamps aren't ordinary clamps. They're what the trade calls smart clamps, and StartSure's version, SafeClamp, checks 8 things before a single amp is allowed through.

Put the red clamp on the black terminal by mistake? Nothing happens. It beeps at you and refuses to fire.

Touch the 2 clamps together? Nothing. Short-circuit protection cuts it dead.

Leave it on too long, overheat it, overcharge it, let it run flat? Protected, protected, protected, protected.

No spark. No bang. No way of hurting your car's electronics, because the box simply won't deliver power until it's confirmed everything's right.
The 3 steps, exactly as they're printed on the card in the box. Big print, because I asked for it.
In 28 years I never once let a member connect jump leads themselves. I've now watched Pauline use StartSure 3 times, on her own, and the third time she didn't even tell me till teatime.

That, more than anything, is why I bought 3 more.

I tested it the way a patrolman would: on the worst battery in the family

My brother-in-law Keith has a 2009 diesel Freelander that lives outside and hadn't turned a wheel in 6 weeks. When I got there the dashboard barely lit up. My meter had the battery at 9.8 volts, which is as good as dead.

Clamps on. Key. Fired on the first turn, in about 8 seconds including me fumbling for the ignition.

Then, because I wanted to know, I switched it off and did it again. And again. 6 starts on the trot on a 2.2 litre diesel that had been standing since November. The screen on the StartSure still said 71%.
71% left after 6 starts on a dead diesel. Took this on Keith's bonnet before I believed it myself.
On a normal car with a normal flat battery, 1 charge is good for up to 20 starts. My own Astra's needed 4 this winter and I've charged the box once.

Keith bought one that afternoon. Then he bought one for his daughter.
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It's also why I don't carry a foot pump, a torch or a spare phone charger any more

Batteries are the number 1 cause of winter breakdowns. Tyres are number 2 (10), and cold shrinks the air in your tyres just like it shrinks the power in your battery.

So StartSure's got a 150 PSI compressor built in. Screw the hose onto the valve, set the pressure on the screen, press start, and it switches itself off when it gets there. A car tyre from soft to right in a few minutes, on your own drive, without the trip to the forecourt and a pound coin for the air machine.

It's a torch, with an SOS flash for the hard shoulder at night. And it's a power bank: a full charge for a phone that's died in the cold at the exact moment you need to ring someone.
Set the pressure, press start, put the kettle on. It switches itself off when the tyre's right.
4 jobs. 1 box. Lives in the glovebox where the road atlas used to be.

What it costs, and what it saves: the sums I used to do with members at the roadside

When the car clicks
How long you wait
What it costs you
Jump leads and a stranger
Until someone stops
£15, plus the risk to a modern car's electronics
Callout, no cover
60 minutes to 6 hours
About £100, plus £1 a mile for towing
Breakdown cover
Same queue, same mornings
From £5.99 a month, every year, for ever
New battery fitted
A garage appointment
£150 to £250, and again in 4 winters
StartSure in the glovebox
8 seconds
£139, once, with a 12-month warranty
In the shops, a branded lithium jump starter on its own is £120 to £150, and a decent digital tyre inflator is another £40 to £60. StartSure does both, and the makers sell it direct, which is how the winter launch price comes in at £139 instead of £278.

That's about the price of 1 callout without cover, minus the 3-hour wait. Less than a fitted battery. And it's the reason the lady in Rotherham would've been home by 2 o'clock.
WINTER LAUNCH VOUCHER
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£139 instead of £278. First 500 units only, then £179.
CLAIM 50% OFF ON THE OFFICIAL SITE
Discount applied at checkout
Voucher valid while the 287 remaining launch units last.

Who I've bought one for, and why it's the only Christmas present I'm giving this year

Pauline's Corsa. My daughter Sarah's Qashqai, because she does the school run in Sheffield with 2 grandkids in the back and I'm not having her stood on a pavement in January waiting for anyone. And Margaret next door, who's 79, still drives to church, and would sooner walk than ring for help.

Margaret used hers in the second week. "Colin," she said, "I felt like the patrol."
Margaret, 79, the morning after she started her own car for the first time in her life. Her neighbour took this from the garden path.
If there's someone you worry about every time the forecast says frost, you already know who this is for. It's the first present I've ever given that I know for a fact will get used.

The 5 questions everyone asks me about it

Will it start my car?
If it's got a 12 volt battery, yes. 4,000 A covers every petrol engine sold in Britain up to 10 litres, and diesels up to 6 litres, which is every diesel car and most vans. It'll do motorbikes, ride-on mowers and boats too.
I'm 70 and I've never touched a battery. Can I really do this?
Yes, and I say that as the man who used to do it for you. Red to red, black to black, turn the key. SafeClamp makes it physically impossible to connect it wrong and do any damage. Margaret's 79. She managed on her second go, without her glasses.
Will it still work if it's sat in the glovebox for months?
Yes. The cells hold their charge for up to 12 months. I top mine up every 3 months from the USB-C socket in the kitchen, same cable as my phone, and it's full in about 3 hours. The screen shows the exact percentage, so there's never any guessing.
Does it work when it's freezing?
It's rated from minus 30°C to plus 65°C. Britain's never recorded minus 30 outside the Highlands. It'll start your car on the coldest morning you'll ever see.
What if it doesn't work for me?
You've got 90 days to try it. If it doesn't start your car, or you just change your mind, send it back for a full refund, return label included. There's a 12-month warranty on top.

How to get yours (official site only)

1
Go to the official StartSure site through the button below. It's not sold in shops, and the winter launch price is only on there.
2
Pick 1, 2 or 3 units. Most people take 2: one for their own car and one for the person they worry about.
3
Pop in your delivery address. Orders go out within 24 hours and arrive by tracked delivery in 2 to 5 working days.
UPDATE, Wednesday 14 October 2026
The winter launch price of £139 (50% off the usual £278) is still live. Of the 500 launch units, 287 are left. When they're gone it goes to £179 until spring. Orders placed today go out within 24 hours.
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What other drivers are saying

Brian T., 68, Warrington
★★★★★
✓ Verified buyer
First frost of the year, my daughter's Fiesta was dead as a doornail on the drive. Clamps on, key, going. She was at work on time and I felt about 30 years younger. No idea how I managed 40 years with jump leads.
Janet W., 61, Norwich
★★★★★
✓ Verified buyer
I'm not mechanical in the slightest. Read the little card once, kept it in the glovebox and forgot about it. In January the car wouldn't start at the garden centre. I did it myself in the car park, on my own, and drove home. I actually rang my son to boast.
Derek H., 73, Carlisle
★★★★★
✓ Verified buyer
Bought 2, one for the car and one for the caravan on the storage site. The pump's the bit I use most, it's done all 4 caravan tyres and the car in one go. Solid thing, feels like it'll outlast me.
P.S. The lady in Rotherham rang the office the next day to say thank you. I've thought about her every winter since. If this page has found you before the first frost, that's exactly the moment to sort it: before Flat Battery Monday, and before the 500 launch units at £139 are gone.
YES, I WANT STARTSURE FOR £139
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Sources: (1) RAC Media Centre, "RAC sees record demand for breakdown assistance", 13 December 2022. (2) The AA, seasonal breakdown volumes, reported January 2026. (3) RAC Breakdown forum, "Call out times", December 2025 and January 2026. (4) AAA Automotive Research Center, battery performance at 0°C and minus 18°C. (5) CAA Automotive Research Center, cold-start current demand. (6) RAC, "Flat Battery Monday", January 2025. (7) Environmental Transport Association, typical callout charge without cover. (8) Which? breakdown provider survey, as quoted by the AA. (9) Manufacturer specification. (10) RAC vehicle fault data, tyres as second most common callout.
This is an advertisement for StartSure. The account above is a dramatisation based on the experiences of StartSure customers and retired roadside professionals; names, places and some details have been changed, and the author is a paid contributor who is not affiliated with, employed by or endorsed by the RAC, the AA or any other breakdown organisation. Statistics are quoted from the public sources listed above and were correct at the time of writing. Start times, the number of starts per charge and inflation times vary with the vehicle, engine size, battery condition and temperature. StartSure is designed for 12 V vehicles only; always follow the instructions supplied. Customer comments reflect individual experiences and are not a guarantee of results.

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