Thinking about the lighting system of a car can even reveal small surprises. Normally one counts everything in the lighting system that contributes in some way either to illuminating the surroundings or to drawing the attention of the environment. Surprisingly, thereby you don't really think about the windshield wipers. And yet they can do an amazing job of creating a free view from the inside out.

Before we get into that, here's a tip on how to let die your windshield wiper motor, not directly, but in a relatively manageable amount of time. Especially in winter when even one of the wiper blades is frozen. It is important that it can still just move out of the switch-off zone when it is switched on.

Namely, then the positive connection to the wiper motor is retained, even if you switch off the windscreen wipers directly. With free-moving wipers, they would now move back and forth once more and only then stop. But they can't do that now. Therefore the voltage at the motor is maintained.

You know the effect when an electric motor wants to work but can't? It's getting hot. Now there is a special rule for wipers. It's said to hold out a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes without burning through. Unfortunately, we cannot give a guarantee for this and we have not tried it yet.

But what to do now? As a first approximation to the problem, we would advise switching off the ignition if the windshield wipers are stuck and have been operated once. You can also use this in order to bring your wipers into a so-called service position. So ignition on, switch on and ignition off at a suitable point. Of course, there are usually instructions on how to get to the service postion, but then you don't need to remember them.

You could then use this opportunity to determine whether the wiper motor is really electroless when the ignition is switched off. If this is not the case, or if you already have a car where the ignition cannot be switched off easily, good advice is expensive. In general, if the mishap described above happens while driving, you should not panic and first bring the car to a safe stop somewhere.

Hands with some manual training can also feel when accessing the windshield wipers whether there is still a motor pulling on them. In the best case, they are successful in freeing the wiper rubber in question from the freezing. Here, of course, a force intervention is meant. Never attack your windshield with partial heat or you will quickly multiply the damage.

A freed wiper arm will also start to rumble immediately, you have to be prepared for that. Also, the wiper rubber could be damaged, no matter. And if it's really frozen solid? Of course, the times given above could be enough to disconnect one of the two battery poles, of course only if you have the appropriate know-how and tools with you.

However, when you disconnect the battery, without having informed yourself in advance, you will not know whether everything will work as before when you reconnect it. In addition, you have checkmate yourself for a subsequent trip to the workshop or even just home. Truly talented people manage the feat even without tools, to remove the plastic cover of the water tank without damage and pull the plug from the wiper motor (picture above).

As a very last resort, you can still hope that the corresponding fuse burn through, but unfortunately more and more functions are combined under one fuse, so that it really only reacts in the event of a short circuit. Sure, you could of course pull the relevant fuse yourself, and indeed there is the instruction manual, which shows where the fuses are in the car, but not their assignment.

We are slowly reaching the end of our advices. You could pull fuses one after the other until the wiper motor stays off, but this is where it gets too complicated because you could interchange fuses according to strength or not remember the exact locations. In fact, there are usually unused places because your car does not have all possible equipments.

Finally, the tip that on a modern car, with a little manual skill, you can try to remove the wiper motor yourself, at least with the linkage (picture above). If that fails, you can still drive to the workshop when the sun is shining, the hopefully won't turn the attempted self-repair into higher costs.