An integral part of defensive driving is “expect the unexpected.” Those people are absolutely at fault.
I learned how to drive in a rear wheel drive, underpowered Suburban. For many years, I drove rear wheel drive, light in the rear end vehicles exclusively. I have never used winter tires. To my knowledge, I do not know anybody who ever uses winter tires.
Knowledge + skill + summer tires will do FAR, FAR better than winter tires will.
Of the population that lives in places that routinely gets snow in winter, 80% will find winter tires to be–at best–unnecessary, if not downright a waste of time and money. When it snows where I live, most of the time the streets are clear within 48 hours. Even in the snowiest months, we spend more time with dry streets than we do snow-covered streets.
You are lazy and stupid enough to depend on technology for a half-assed solution. I hope that you never drive anywhere within 100 miles of me.
Hmm… that’s some very bad thinking there. You should consider:
Knowledge + skill + winter tires will do far better than knowledge +skill + summer tires.
And of course not everyone has driving skill, and the people who lack it often don’t realize it.
Same thing for knowledge and thinking skills.
If you want some decent info on the superiority of winter tires, you could check out the tests at tirerack.com.
No, they won’t. Really, they won’t. The experts and the people who test such things completely disagree with you. However good a driver you are, in winter conditions you are safer with winter tyres on than summer tyres. To argue otherwise is just nonsensical.
Winter tyres increase the margin of safety by a huge amount.
As you say, you’ve never used them so I’m not sure how you can make such a sweeping statement. I have driven with both and winter tyres give you far more traction and stopping ability in winter conditions. Not surprising seeing as that is what they are designed to do.
I’ve lost count of the number of times, when skiing, that I’ve had to help out 4x4 and other cars on all-seasons. They get stuck very easily and my humble fwd with decent winter tyres doesn’t even notice it.
Christ. Hostile much? Hey, I hope you never have to interact with anyone ever because I’m pretty sure you’d immediately go apoplectic and have a heart attack right on the spot.
What is lazy and/or stupid about using the correct tire for the conditions you drive in? All the driving skill in the world will not change the fact that the same vehicle will take two or three times the distance to stop on summer tires than it will on winter tires if there’s snow on the road.
I grew up and learned to drive in Maine, so I’m no stranger to winter. I’ve driven quite a few 100 mile (round trip) commutes in weather that would shut everything down in lower-latitude states. My commutes these days are only 15 miles round trip, thankfully, but I still change my tires over twice per year, every November and April. I do this because the studded winter tires I use (made by Nokian) are not a “half-assed” solution as you ignorantly claim, but because there is a measurable and incredible improvement in winter handling when compared to all-season tires, and especially when compared to summer tires.
I was always an ‘all-seasons’ guy (living in MO), but when the boys started driving the Explorer, I decided to put snow tires on it. My god, the difference in handling and stopping was eye-opening - I had just assumed the all-season tires were doing a decent job (and they may have), but the winter tires were much, much better.
If you regularly encounter wintery weather I think they are a good investment.
Interestingly, I have been to the snow dome where they filmed one of those tests and I know how steep it is. This winter we had an apartment up the side of a steep hill in Austria, comparable in steepness to the snow dome. It snowed heavily and the general rule over there is not to completely plough and salt the side roads but to grit and compress instead. Looking at the hill the first day I was mentally prepared to break out the chains as it looked pretty daunting. But no, the car sailed up it with only a single chirp of the traction control. (when I purposefully broke traction to find out where the limit was)
There were two occasions when I did use the chains but that was purely belt and braces after a large dump wasn’t cleared at all and I reckon I still could have got up on bare tyres alone but I did have some quick-fit self-tensioning chains that I wanted to try out anyway. They were excellent by the way, 20 seconds per tyre to fit and remove and they provided traction way above even what the winter tyres provided.
The BMW 4x4 of the other family in our apartment building needed to fit chains every day for ascent and descent as they only had all-season tyres and 4wd didn’t help him.
FWIW, I bought a set of steel wheels with snow tyres mounted for about £600. They lasted me for the 5 years and 60,000 miles I covered and it meant I never had to change my summer tyres either. The steels fit my new car also and a new set of snow tyres fitted onto them was £372, I got £120 back by selling my old winter tyres and I expect to get another 5 years out of the new ones as well.
All things considered I reckon it costs me about £40-50 per year to run winter tyres. Seems a good deal to me for the benefit they provide.
I’m located about 20 miles from where this happened. I had the misfortune of having to drive in these conditions to travel ten miles on my work commute home. My 19 minute commute home grew to an hour and 40 minutes.
This storm had intermittent light snow, whiteout, heavy snow, patchy dense fog and even some weird dippin dots kind of snowfall that gave all the local meteorologists a chubby when they saw it.
It was a very slow moving but heavy system. West bound traffic on 70 went from clear highway to flurries to light pack to heavy pack in the matter of a few miles.
Yes they were driving too fast for the conditions you see in the video. Those conditions occurred in a very short distance.
But do you really believe that all of those people were stupid? Including the long haul truck drivers in the video?
People drive way too fast for the visibility conditions in fog all the time. It is very scary. My wife was driving home from a trip in heavy fog on a highway and she said she could only see about 25 feet in front of her car. At this level of visibility you really can’t go more than 30 mph. She found some taillights of a person going about 35 and she just stayed behind the other car. Yet people were flying past her at 60+ the entire way home. Any obstruction in the road, or a stopped vehicle, would have caused a pile-up.
This person doesn’t know what they are talking about.
You don’t use winter tires because of snow. You use winter tires because they are designed to stay flexible and maintain traction at cold temperatures, unlike summer or all-season tires which turn into bricks.
You can, of course, pick your winter tires based on what you typically drive on, since there are some that are better on ice, others on cold pavement, others better at dealing with snow.
I have to say I’d be interested in Flyer coming back to respond to the overwhelming evidence in favour of winter tyres. I’m wondering what it would actually take to change their mind.
Like many I was sceptical of their worth, that’s fine, but actual empirical evidence made the case convincingly and actual real-world use sealed the deal.
I’m a real world case. I live at 11,200 feet in the Rockies. I drive over the continental divide twice a day. My Wife and I MUST have 4wheel drives. And for our road and driveway use 4 wheel drive EVERY DAY for six months out of the year. Not only do true winter tires allow us to work and home, they are much better in the conditions we drive on. LOT’S of snow and ice all of it 2 lane winding highway. We find that Bridgestone Blizzaks are best for our particular situation.
Of course you can’t discount experience and defensive driving, but when you deal with ice and snow 6 months out of the year I’ll take any advantage I can get.
Looking at his posts, I think we can safely conclude that he’s not going to change his mind. This is one of those “I’m a better driver after a few drinks” kind of things that no amount of empirical rebuttal will change. I’ll stop short of suggesting that he would handwave any evidence away as part of Big Tire’s conspiracy to force people in cold places to buy tires they don’t need.
P.S. If you live in Florida, you can use summer tires always and forever!
I actually found this site (http://www.skstuds.ca/winter-tire-tests/) as I was doing my research into winter tires, as it was time for me to buy a new set back in November of 2018.
The thing to look at is the individual results for each tire, where they break down the test results by performance category (ice handling, snow handling, dry pavement handling, etc). That way you can make a decision based on what you deal with the most.
I might be the only idiot to have grippy winter tires in the front, and “low rolling resistance” tires in the back.
But that’s because I spend all winter purposely fishtailing. And hitting the emergency brake as I crank the wheel, so I can drift into a parking space on the opposite side of the street.
When I shop for tires I click on “Heavy Snow Area” and “Immature”.
