With Met Eireann forecasting heavy hail showers over the next week, the RSA has urged drivers to take caution heading into the final month of the year.
The national meteorological service expects hail showers in the north and west of the country Wednesday night, with Friday and Saturday bringing the chance of hail as part of heavy wintery showers.
The RSA says the weather phenomenon 'can lead to slippery and dangerous driving conditions', particularly on higher speed roads like dual carriageways or motorways.
The difficulty with hail showers is their unpredictability and localised nature. As a hail shower tracks across the country it deposits a narrow band of ball bearing sized hailstones on the ground.
Where the track of a shower crosses a road, drivers may suddenly pass from perfectly good road conditions onto a carpet of hailstones. This has the potential to catch drivers out if they do not immediately react to the hazardous driving conditions.
The authority has posted a number of guidelines, which they say can help drivers avoid accidents during the 'common but unpredictable' event.
These include driving slowly but in a high gear to maintain grip, accelerating and braking gently and slowly on roads with bad bends, and keeping an eye for road markings that may become 'obscured' in the expected poor weather conditions.
