Summer travel — the eight items in the boot of the car that change what happens when something goes wrong
Most household preparedness assumes you are at home. For 2-4 weeks a summer you are not — you are on a motorway in southern France, on a Greek island, in a car park in Croatia. A small boot-kit handles the things that go wrong on those days. Eight items. Total cost ~€60.
Where things actually go wrong in summer
European holiday-season incident reports from national civil-protection authorities cluster around three patterns: - Vehicle breakdowns in unfamiliar terrain — overheating on Spanish or Italian highways, dead batteries at altitude in the Alps, flat tyres on rural Croatian roads - Medical emergencies in places where the local language is not yours — heatstroke, dehydration, food poisoning, sunburn deep enough to need treatment - Communication blackouts — areas with poor mobile coverage (Norwegian fjords, Spanish sierras, Greek islands), lost phones, dead batteries, no working language to make a call
None of these is a survival scenario. They are inconvenience scenarios that occasionally become emergencies because of how the household reacts in the first hour.
The eight-item summer car kit
Total cost: ~€60. Time to assemble: 30 minutes. Lives in the boot from May to September, comes out for the rest of the year.
- 6 × 1.5 litre water bottles — €4. Not for drinking unless desperate. For the radiator that overheats in stop-go traffic at 38°C, for washing a wound clean, for cooling someone with early heat exhaustion, for the engine that can run hot for 30 km if you can refill the coolant. Rotate every 6 months.
- A small first-aid kit with antiseptic, butterfly bandages, sterile gauze, plasters, paracetamol, antihistamines, rehydration salts, sunburn gel — €15. Buy a pre-made one at any pharmacy. The European standard kit (DIN 13164) is overkill for hand-held use; a small travel kit handles the most common family-on-holiday incidents.
- One physical paper map of the country you're driving in, or at minimum the region — €8. Sat-nav fails in mountain areas, ferry routes, and certain rural Italian/Spanish terrain. A paper map is also how you find the nearest village when the data is dead.
- A 20,000 mAh power bank, fully charged, with a USB-C and Lightning cable — €25. Dead phone with no information is genuinely dangerous in an unfamiliar country. A charged power bank gives you four phone-recharges, which is two days of essential communication.
- A high-vis vest per person in the car — €5 for a pack of four. Legally required in many EU countries; functionally essential if you are out of the car on a motorway shoulder at 22:00.
- A small emergency thermal blanket per person — €4 for a pack of four. The space-blanket type. For the mountain breakdown where the temperature drops 15°C after sunset. For the night spent in the car waiting for help. For the person showing early hypothermia after swimming in cold sea water.
- One physical credit card and €100 in mixed-denomination cash — separate from your daily wallet, hidden in the car. Card fraud, lost wallet, ATM outage, or simply being in a remote village that does not take card. €100 covers a tow truck, two nights of cheap accommodation, or two days of food and fuel.
- A list of important phone numbers on paper, taped inside the glove box — €0. The numbers: your country's embassy in the country you're in, your travel insurance emergency line, the EU emergency number (112, works everywhere), your bank's card-cancellation number, two family members. When your phone dies, this is what saves you.
What this is not
This is not a car-mounted survival kit. There is no machete, no satellite phone, no folding stove. This is a small box of cheap items that handles the realistic problems a European family encounters on holiday: dead battery, overheating, mild medical, communication outage, navigation failure.
The Italian Protezione Civile holiday-safety bulletin makes the same recommendation in slightly different words. The Swiss TCS (Touring Club) emphasises the high-vis vest and the paper map. The French Sécurité Routière focuses on the water and the first-aid kit. The patterns converge.
One thing this week: if you're driving anywhere this summer — even a 200 km weekend trip — put the eight items in a single box this Saturday. 30 minutes, ~€60. Leaves the boot in October.
— Systems Fail Lab