My wife was driving the car on Friday, September 12, 2008 on state route 2 westbound during a rainstorm at approximately 5 pm. Suddenly, the windshield wipers stopped working when a semi-truck passed. This has never happened before. She was very scared and began to slow down. She then turned the wiper control lever to every speed setting until the high speed setting began to work. Wiper motor was determined to have failed and was replaced.

- Wickliffe, OH, USA

Many makes of cars now have the windshield washer fluid coming out of small rubber tubes attached to the windshield wipers. When I was driving on the Pennsylvania turnpike in January the windshield washer fluid froze within the tubes and would not come out. This creates a dangerous situation in which road salt splashed from other cars fairly quickly builds up on your windshield and you can hardly see out of the windshield while driving over 60 mph on an interstate highway. The day was cold, perhaps 14 degrees, but not extremely cold and this was Pennsylvania not Minnesota nor Canada. My guess is that the 14 degrees weather plus driving at 70 miles per hour creates a windchill that is below the -20 degrees that the washer fluid is good for. But it is on cold winter days that you specifically need the windshield washer fluid because of the salt left on the road. The fluid began to flow again when I got into slightly warmer temperatures in Maryland. I never diluted the windshield fluid with water. For this winter I have bought windshield washer fluid that is good to minus 38 degrees and have also bought an alcohol additive for the fluid that will make it good to about minus 40 degrees and I will see if that works. But many drivers won't know ahead of time to do that, and almost all gas stations only sell the standard -20 fluid. I think that car manufacturers in designing future models should go back to the old system of windshield washer fluid coming out of slits in the hood instead of coming out of the windshield wipers.

- Washington, DC, USA