Ohio crews have used record amounts of salt and manpower to keep the roads passable this winter.
AAA says it’s also put in overtime keeping cars on the roads.
Bevi Powell is Senior Vice President at AAA’s East Central office, which tracks data from northeast Ohio. She says emergency road service calls for the 18-county region was up 30 percent from last year, for the period of January to March.
“We’ve assisted around 100,000 motorists," says Powell. "The Number 1 call for help was for tows, batteries was second, and then of course, tire related, because the extreme temperatures can affect inflation on your tires. We had a significant amount of lockouts too, because they start their car to warm, and then they lock their keys in the car.”
Meanwhile, Kimberly Schwind, a representative with AAA Ohio says so far this year, they’ve received 93,000 calls from a 38-county area they serve. That’s a jump of 13 percent from the 2013 winter season.
They also report replacing 2100 car batteries just for January, the month when the polar vortex hit.