I have Blizzak tires and I like them a lot.
They’re not cheap. However, I live in an area of 100 inches of snow a year and I consider safety to be hugely important. There is an instantly obvious difference between driving with them and with my all-weather tires if I get caught by an early snowstorm. For me the money is worth it. You may not need them if you get much less snow in your winters.
I agree that the Blizzaks are good winter tires.
The interesting thing with tires is that price does not necessarily mean quality or performance. Some companies merely charge more because they spend millions on advertising(like Michelin or Goodyear).
Find out which tires are available for your vehicle and do the research, there are literally thousands of reviews and comments on the net. You should be able to short list the brands fairly quickly and decide which one you want.
Personally, I use all-season on aluminium rims for about 8-9 months of the year then switch to winters on steel rims for the worst months.
dolphinboy, if you are driving SUVs/Trucks you may have a hard time finding a dedicated snow tire large enough. Neither Nokian or Blizzacks will fit my Pathfinder.
I went with Cooper Arctic Claw’s and am very happy with them.
This is a very good idea, especially since you are new to winter driving. When I’m driving along and I start to skid (it WILL happen to you, more than once per winter), I just take my foot off the gas and do my best to steer appropriately. It’s second nature to me because I’m so used to it happening. You need to get used to what skids feel like.
For the record, I hate ABS braking systems - the last thing I need when I’m skidding is the brakes fighting me.
VDC or Vehicle Dynamic Control can mess you up too. On my car, besides controlling the individual wheel brakes, it limits engine power for about 2-3 seconds whenever it senses any slip. It’s too sensitive. I turn it off in some conditions, like having to blast up my driveway. Or certain situations when I’m turning onto a major road from the area I live.
Do not be tempted to drive across a lake. No matter how cold it has been lately, or how thick you believe the ice to be. Just dont’ do it.
If you insist, though, please pre-register for your sign, so we can have it to you when you thaw out.
Another Montana driver voting for studded winter tires here. 4x4 trucks are good for deep snow, but they’re really not that great for ice and on-road snow conditions since without the 4wd (which shouldn’t be engaged when you’re driving on even patchy dry pavement) they’re just top-heavy RWD vehicles.
If you get winter tires mounted on rims, many places will change them over for free, since putting on the snow tires is pretty much the same labor as doing a tire rotation and your tires usually come with free rotations. With the amount of driving I do on my one car with snow tires, it works out about right for me to just have the tires rotated when I get them changed over.
I also got excellent performance from Goodyear Wrangler LT (light truck) tires on my Jeeps.
Also, maybe mentioned upthread, is the need to budget your traction.
The greater the traction demand you place on the tires through braking or acceleration, the less traction you have available for turning. The opposite is also true. You need to manage a balance between the two.
Sharp turn? No braking or acceleration.
Heavy braking or acceleration? No turning.
Heavy braking or acceleration and sharp turning? Nope.
Depends on where you live.
Winnebago County Sherrifs Office Ice Safety Tips:
Course, there’s always cracks to deal with:
The tires you want for dry highway driving will have the least amount of friction possible, since that way you will get better gas mileage. In rain or snow, these same tires will perform very poorly. On the other hand, tires designed for rain or snow will have more grip, and will give you worse gas mileage. Tires designed for rain will push the water out away from the tire. However, in snow the channels that push the water out may fill up with snow, which will leave you with a tire that performs very poorly.
“All season” tires are a big compromise between all of these conditions, and therefore will never be the best tires for any of them. If you live in an area that doesn’t get a huge amount of snow (like say Maryland or Virginia), or you only drive on roads that are well maintained and kept free of snow in the winter, then you can get away with all season tires, which is nice because then you don’t have to have two sets of tires that you have to store and rotate around and all of that. On the other hand, if you are like the OP and live someplace that gets a lot of snow, you’ll do a lot better with a dedicated snow tire. You don’t want to use them year round though, since they will get poor mileage and will wear out fairly quickly in warmer weather.
Studs help to drive on ice, but they are very annoying when driving on dry pavement. If you routinely drive on really bad roads, you may want to invest in some chains. The nice thing about chains is that you can put them on when you need them and take them off when you don’t. The bad thing about chains is that it takes some effort to put them on and take them off.
4WD helps too, but you have to be careful. 4WD helps you go. It helps you turn a little, but it doesn’t help you stop at all. As others have mentioned, don’t go thinking that 4WD just always drives better in the snow or else you’ll probably end up in a ditch at some point. 4WD is also a bit tricky in the way that it recovers from sliding. With FWD (front wheel drive) if you just point the wheels in the direction you want to go and give it some gas, that’s not all that bad of a thing to do. If you do the same thing on a RWD (rear wheel drive) vehicle, you are most likely going to end up with the back end of the vehicle in front of the front end (wheeeee!). While the back end of a RWD tends to spin out if you don’t turn into the direction of the skid, RWD does give you an advantage over FWD in that the drive wheels and the steering wheels aren’t the same wheels, so when the drive wheels lose traction, you don’t lose steering at the same time. With 4WD though, turning into the skid or turning in the direction that you want to go can both lead to weird behavior, depending on how much you turn the wheels and whether the front wheels or rear wheels happen to grip first. If you aren’t careful, you can sometimes have the rear wheels push you in one direction and then have the front wheels grab and pull you in another direction, making a sudden snap turn of sorts.
With whatever kind of vehicle you have, one of the best things you can do is find yourself a nice wide open parking lot with no cars in it, and drive around skidding like an idiot. What you want to do is get a feel for exactly how and when the vehicle breaks traction and how it recovers as well. Then, when you are out on the road you’ll not only recognize when you are starting to lose traction sooner, but you’ll know how to recover from it as well.
The biggest key to driving on icy and snowy roads is to not make any sudden changes. No sharp turns, no fast stops, no fast starts. Plan ahead. If you see a light ahead, slow down in case it turns red. You can do a slow gentle stop even under the worst of conditions. Trying to lose a bunch of speed in a hurry though is only going to result in you sliding out into the intersection and getting hit. Also, leave a lot more room than normal between yourself and the vehicles around you.
Nothing grips on ice. 4WD doesn’t help you at all there, except maybe that with four drive wheels at least one of them may find a patch of road that isn’t icy and get some grip. The best thing to do with ice is just plan ahead as best as you can, and plan on driving at a constant speed straight across the icy patch. Trying to do anything else, like turn or stop on ice, isn’t going to work very well. Bridges often ice over before the roads around them do (since wind blows under the bridge and cools it down faster), so slow down and take it easy when approaching a bridge so that you can just easily and calmly drive across it.
If you have 4WD, read your owner’s manual to find out if you can leave it in 4WD mode on dry pavement or not. It puts a lot of strain on 4WD vehicles that don’t have a center differential if you drive them on dry pavement. You can wear out your tires much faster and can wreck the transfer sometimes as well.
And NOT with your brakes! Coasting is your bestest friend.
CMC fnord!
I learned to drive in winter and after a monster snow storm my brother took me to a nice wide open parking lot with no cars in it to learn the ropes. Trouble was the only car we had that night was a FWD rental and nothing I tried would get the ass to swing around. Having never had a FWD my brother couldn’t get it to happen either.
We did both learn that a FWD will fishtail at +35mph . . . in reverse!
This is what the parking brake is for. It breaks the back end loose very nicely; you’ll just need to build up some speed first. Also, keep the release button pressed, so that you can let off the brake as soon as you need to.
I try to do this every couple of years.
Take your car out to an empty parking lot, which has a layer of packed snow/ice on it. Now play around, and see what it takes to put your car into a spin. Try getting some speed, then hit the brakes and turn the wheel at the same time. Do the same thing without the brakes.
My gut level reaction to hitting ice is to stomp on the brakes. I WANT TO STOP NOW!! I have to train my brain to override this. You really do have to pick between braking or turning.
And as others have said before “4 Wheel Drive does not equal 4 Wheel Stop”
Don’t understand the need for snow tires. 28 northern Wisconsin winters now and never felt the need for them - even the two winters driving a Chevette.
Slow down, slow down and slow down.
Been driving on lakes for years when ice fishing. Not a big deal if you know the area is safe.
I wish the people driving the larger vehicles would get that. I spend every winter looking nervously in my rear view mirror, wondering if the big half-ton barreling down on me is going to stop. And it’s not like half-tons are doing any better on ice than my Corolla, either.
Round here, its the Porsches that feel they’re invincible b/c of their AWD. Somebody didn’t tell them they need a little ground clearance!
Excellent advice. I was heading home tonight on the highway, where the speed limit is 110 km/h (about 70 mph). Conditions were lousy, and I was sure there was black ice on the road. Sure enough, I hit a patch of black ice, and lost control. But I was able to regain control while still on the road–perhaps because I was only going 70 km/h (about 45 mph) to begin with. I have no idea how fast the cars in the ditch were going when they spun out, but I’d bet that it was faster than me.
It bears repeating: slow down, slow down, slow down.