In rain, reduce speed to suit visibility and grip, leave more room ahead and keep phone interaction for a safe stop. A driving journal can help you look back on the conditions of a trip, but it cannot decide that a wet road is safe or prove that you left enough space.
The useful routine has three parts: prepare before departure, give the road your attention while moving, and review one practical lesson after parking. This guide uses Ontario's official driver's handbook for wet-weather guidance and keeps the journal exercise separate from that guidance.
Prepare the car and the trip before moving
Check that you can see clearly through the windshield and that the wipers clear it without streaks. Ontario's handbook recommends replacing ineffective blades, keeping tires in good condition and slowing down on wet roads. Set your route and any trip-recording preferences before departure so they do not become another task in traffic.
Read the Ontario handbook's rain and bad-weather guidance for the official road-safety advice. Follow local rules and your vehicle's instructions.
Allow space for the conditions you can actually see
Ontario advises leaving more space behind the vehicle ahead in rain. The extra gap also reduces exposure to spray. Drive slowly enough to stop within the distance you can see; smooth steering, braking and acceleration help reduce the chance of a skid. Avoid puddles and flooded roads.
Do not turn that guidance into a fixed target on your phone. Traffic, visibility, road surface and the vehicle all matter. A smoother-looking trace is not a reason to delay braking for an actual hazard, and a trip score should never compete with the immediate decisions needed on the road.
Keep the phone out of the driving task
Do not enter weather notes, inspect route traces or compare a score while driving. If something needs your attention in an app, wait until the vehicle is safely parked. Automatic recording can reduce the need to operate a trip timer, but it does not make other phone interaction appropriate.
For a separate before-and-after phone routine, read Phone distraction while driving. Keep any journal review for after the drive.
Review context before comparing two journeys
After parking, choose one wet trip and one familiar dry trip that followed a similar route. Start with the context you remember: daylight, spray, traffic, stops, roadworks and the purpose of the drive. A difference in travel time may reflect conditions rather than an improvement or decline in driving ability.
Use a private note outside the app if your version does not offer the note field you need. A brief entry can simply describe the conditions, the decision you made and one thing to prepare next time. Do not add another person's name, number plate or precise destination when it contributes nothing useful to your own review.
- Conditions: daylight rain, heavy spray on one section, slower traffic.
- Decision: allowed more room and accepted the longer journey.
- Next preparation: leave more time and check the streaking wiper before another wet trip.
Treat scores as incomplete feedback
A phone-based record does not establish tire grip, stopping distance or what another road user did. A sudden braking event can reflect a necessary response, and an uneventful score can coexist with risks the phone did not measure. Look for a useful question, not a verdict about whether the trip was safe.
Roadsy explains these boundaries in How driving scores work. Read the confidence information alongside any score you review.
Choose one change you can act on
Make the next action concrete: replace a streaking wiper, allow more departure time or set up the route before leaving. Review several trips before declaring a personal pattern, and do not compare unrelated journeys as though weather, traffic and road layout were identical. This is a reflection exercise, not a validated safety assessment.
Roadsy is in private Android testing. Explore the Roadsy roadmap for current release progress, and keep your trip review private unless you deliberately choose to share it. Official guidance was checked September 8, 2026.