Look at the following footage of cars and buses sliding in Montreal
Granted, it is very icy conditions and on a slope as well. As well, I doubt if any of these vehicles have winter tires on (which make one heck of a difference)
However, I also see the cars and buses with these much wider tires than tires of say 20 - 30 years ago.
Obviously, these wider tires are much more stable in normal driving conditions but as you can see, they suck in the winter conditions. Not only that, I can’t see any way to fit tire chains on these vehicles easily.
When I think back to the 80’s, I had an older Toyota corolla with fairly narrow tires (I think they were 165R13’s
Even though they were only all season tires and, they had some good grip and with the narrow width were reasonably good in the snow and ice conditions.
Putting a set of winter tires on this car and it was almost like driving on dry pavement.
In the 2010+, when I drive these new vehicles with the wider tires in the snow and ice, unless they have winter tires on, they seem to get stuck even in a parking lot.
Of course, I may have confirmation bias with this
One other point that I will make on this in that during WW2, the German vehicles would often get stuck in the snow and ice where as the Russian vehicles would keep on moving because of their narrower tires and greater clearances.
Looking at the video again, it is especially noticeable with the police car on how it just slide down the slope out of control with its wide tires and generally, the police are usually fairly good drivers:D
That’s a very odd video. It appears as though a few drivers were pumping their brakes, and yet their wheels weren’t turning at all. I don’t know what would cause that.
there’s no such thing as a car/truck which is “good in snow” (sorry Subaru fans, but you’re all wet.) it’s all about the tires. Summer performance tires are absolutely, 100% worthless in snow. A lot of “all-season” tires aren’t much better. real winter tires have tall, soft tread blocks with hundreds of sipes in them to “bite” into snow and slush and give you traction. Unfortunately, people are more willing to spend thousands of dollars on something like a sick Subaru WRX because it’s “AWD is awesome in snow” yet still get stuck or slide around because they’re too cheap to spend a few hundred on replacing the performance hockey pucks with actual winter tires.
Snow’s actually easier to deal with than ice; my pickup does reasonably well in snowy conditions with all-season tires, but it’s no better on ice than any other vehicle.
Do winter tires help at all with ice, or are they as worthless as the rest?
That happened, I believe, on Cote des Neiges road, which is very steep. They say that in the old days of trolley cars, the passengers would have to get up to push the trolleys up that hill. The paper said that, under normal circumstances, that would have been the first stree salted, but the salting trucks had a couple of other emergencies they had to respond to first.
The law makes snow tires obligatory by Dec. 15, but all too many drivers wait till the first snowfall. I had mine put on around Nov. 10. They certainly do make a difference and yes, they help on ice, at least a little. AWD makes a big difference too.
It’s the law to have winter tires in Quebec from 15 Dec until 15 Mar. Most fleets will have them on before that but even so, I can tell you from personal experience that even studded winter tires won’t help much on glare ice; you’ll still go slippy slidey. jz is absolutely right in that even AWD (Subaru owner) doesn’t help much if you don’t have the right tires on. As to whether cars are worse on winter roads compared to 30 years ago; it’s not even a contest. If you put the same tires (say a set of Blizzak WS-80 s) on a pair of F-150 XLT s you’ll stop shorter and have far more control overall with the new truck. The same applies to any vehicle if you do a fair comparison.
FWIW, my Legacy has a set of Nokian Haakapelitta winter tires on and they make driving in the winter a far more pleasant experience.
Every vehicle I’ve owned with winters I have the rims one inch smaller and run a narrower tire with a taller side profile for exactly the reasons the OP lists.
If anyone knows how to drive on ice and snow it’s Canadians. But sometimes water freezes with such a smooth, hard surface that non-studded tires simply can not grip the surface.
Studless tires help a little bit; IIRC there’s additional silica in the tread compound to give it some “bite.” But nothing short of studs or chains will help more than a little.
I’d say that the performance of studless winter tires is more than a “little bit” better than all-seasons. Just to pick one of the top results off of Google, there’s this Tire Rack comparison on an ice rink. Stopping distance of the all-season tire from 10 mph was 40 feet, vs 21 feet for the winter tire.
Some of the best snow tire compounds do offer additional grip on ice, but mainly at low speeds and are better for moving rather than stopping. I agree that on sheer ice there is nothing short of studs and chains that will work and even those have their limits.
But modern cars are much better than older cars in winter conditions in general. Things like traction control, anti-lock brakes, more common AWD, and smart transmissions give you much better tools to deal with bad conditions. Tire technology has vastly improved as well, but you could put modern tires on older cars and gain most of that benefit.
Ice is not some magical substance that prevents wheels from turning. It’s the brakes used on ice that do that.
And based on that video, I question that assertion. I don’t know if I could have done any better, but I for sure would have been doing things that had a better chance of working. Most of those idiots just rode their brakes all the way to the bottom, even though they should have known that it didn’t stand a snowball’s chance of working.
I don’t disagree that the winter tires of today are much better than any tires of the past and certainly traction control and all wheel drive help.
The point that I was observing is the overall tendency towards these wider low profile tires and low clearances is making it worse than the older narrower tires in winter,
I haven’t even got into the general increase in weight of vehicles which once the vehicles are moving, they are a lot harder to stop.
And yes, I am well aware of how bad ice can be especially when it is just at or below freezing, especially on a slope.
In one nasty blizzard (NW IN 1972 - cold dry air comes down Lke Michigan and finds warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico channeled by the Appalachian and Ozark mountains - nasty stuff).
I had a '65 VW bug and studded tires. The bug had a smooth belly pan and tall, skinny tires.
I had the roads and streets to myself - the cop cars were all busy on the highways with people who got to the road before spinning out at speed.
People who drive in snow/ice replace those tires with taller, skinnier tires with better grip. If the owners didn’t do that it’s their own fault. Summer cars get put away when the snow flies for this reason. There are snow tire options that fit nearly every car with performance tires, granted that’s at added cost to the owners. But most cars come with trim levels that have different sized tires - if snow performance is important to you then you have a choice to make.
Weight also helps your tires get better grip. The weight of cars is also a factor of safety equipment and better construction; things that make driving in snow safer as well.