Couldn’t imagine not to. My winter tires get on the car in October and stay on until May. In that period, there’s a more than even chance that the roads are either icy, slushy or snowy. Clearing all roads and salting or sanding them before the morning rush hour every day it snows or there’s a frost is just not doable for the county, so driving on summer tires in the winter is a reeealy bad idea.
And since very good studless winter tires (e.g. Bridgestone, Nokian or Continental) have been available since the late 90s, I’m driving those these days. There’s only a couple of days every year that the conditions are so bad that they require studs, and a set of chains is good enough for those mornings.
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Winter tires produced for the Nordic market are quite different from winter tires produced for continental Europe. Nordic tires are optimized for real winter conditions and thus have not so good properties on dry pavement at above-freezing temperatures, while tires for the European market are optimized for less winterly conditions. Which means that I wouldn’t drive those tires in Nordic winter conditions
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Uuuh-huh? I know that studded tires are forbidden in large parts of continental Europe, but studless?
We bought the Smart with a set of snow tires and change them every year. I’m not sure how much longer we’re keeping the van so I’m not going to buy a set of snow tires for it now. We don’t drive much outside the city although we did need to use chains to get out of my BIL’s cottage after Christmas this year.
When we replace it we’ll do the same as with the Smart - get the snow tires right away and change them every year.
Southern Michigan. I use snow tires during winter months, and it’s enabled me to switch to “summer only” tires for the rest of the year. I bought my car 10+ years ago with all-season tires, and they were tolerable for the first winter. The second winter they were absolutely horrible, so for the third winter I bought snow tires and a cheap set of rims. Snow tires kick ass, no two ways about it.
Recently bought a new Honda CR-V for my wife. Instead of paying $1500 for all-wheel-drive and suffering a 1-MPG penalty, we got the two-wheel drive version, and spent the $1500 on a second set of rims and snow tires. The rims came from these guys; they are refinished OEM wheels, (but much cheaper than new), so the car looks stock even when snow tires are on. Plus with snow tires, the car will stop better than an AWD car with all-season tires.
My only complaint is having to lug eight tires to/from the basement twice a year for our cars. I finally decided I’m going to build a tire rack in my garage this spring.
Been using snow tires for a few years now in winter. What a difference it makes getting out of the driveway and holding on to the road in all conditions. Heading to NW Michigan this morning and I am glad to have snow tires on the car. I have sporty rims for summer wheels and the old stock rims for snow tires. Our mechanic stores the wheels in his garage all year…for nothing! Though he works on all our cars and it all evens out in the end.
Smart man. I’ve given this advice to friends so many times, it’s not even funny. It actually turns out to be a cost savings, when you consider a good portion of the eastern/NE states (where I live), don’t suffer from wintery conditions for a good portion of the year, and so AWD becomes a penalty. Add to the fact that they neglect tires, because they think AWD will compensate for less-than-new all-seasons, and they’ve been worse off in the winter months.
I keep telling them “tires are the only part of the car touching the ground, don’t underestimate them”.
I certainly agree. You can really feel the difference in control when using modern winter tires.
If you ever have winter conditions to face, it would be foolish not to use them - the best driver in the world can’t always compensate for suddenly encountering ice on the road and losing traction.
I live in suburban Chicago, where, up until the past year or so, snow was an expected part of winter.
Never used to switch to snow tires, until I got a Mustang last year. With a rear-wheel-drive torque-mobile, snow tires became a necessity (and they definitely helped during the few snowfalls we did get last winter).
It’s funny – teaching my kid to drive, I happened to mention to her that in the old days, people would change their tires in winter, or even put chains on them. I had no idea people still did that. I thought all-season tires were basically universal. I’ve never heard of anyone putting snow tires on here in Massachusetts. Not that the subject comes up that often in conversation.
Winter tires are a Godsend now. Great technology, and as mentioned, once you have the spare rims it really doesn’t cost much more to swap out tires every 6ish months.
So, we’ll be seeing you in Arizona in a few decades or so?
That video is awesome. The stopping distance blew my mind - I knew my winter tires were much better on the ice and snow than my all-seasons, but I didn’t realize it was that much better!
As an aside, I went for a walk today and saw all the places where people had run off the road and crashed into things in the last couple of weeks when it was very icy on the hill we live on.
Yeah, we’ve been meaning to get up to Radium Hot Springs again this winter.
This is indeed the general principle, but the fact of the matter is that only the main roads ever get dry over the course of the winter; the side streets remain snowy, icy, and heavily rutted, so navigating around your neighbourhood is challenging at best.
Mustang owner here as well and the snow tires, combined with the car’s traction control, have made driving around town in icy conditions a snap. I never feel like the car is out of control and if the back end starts to slip a bit because I was a little too aggressive on the gas, the traction control just rights the ship immediately. Super sweet!
I finally got a set of snow tires for my Tercel for the winter of 2010-2011 and was sold after the first snowfall. The difference in handling, acceleration and stopping distance was immediately apparent and left me kinda kicking myself for not doing it sooner. So when we got the ‘Stang in the summer of 2011, swapping in the snow tires in the fall really was a no-brainer. And, as mentioned upthread, having them on their own rims makes switching them out cheap and easy. Happily, we have a big-ass garage, so storage for two cars’ worth of tires is no biggie.
In wintery climate, I think they are more useful than ever. The modern ones are really, really good - when I put them on I notice an immediate and substantial difference in winter handling.
I use all seasons year round. I live in Rochester, NY which normally gets a lot of snow but they do a good enough job of clearing the roads. Even on snowy roads the all seasons work fine for me.
None of them require anything special in the way of tires.
