Its no so much what you drive its how you drive, I've seen many a 4x4 in the ditch see AWD & 4x4 only help you accelerate away most 4x4 disengage when you hit the brakes.
Stability control along with traction control in a well balanced FWD car/van/suv/truck is what you really need.
Tyres well i've managed on all seasons without incident, at slick interchanges you can sometimes try to pull away and remain stationary for a few seconds small price to pay as a winter set of wheels tyres could cost $1000+.
In Calgary you'd expect them to clear the snow off the main roads but they don't

Snow tires are really nothing at all to do with wheels spining at slick interchanges.

Yes, that probably wont happen with them installed, but the real benefit is when you have to brake hard and/or steer to avoid trouble.

All the people saying that you can get by without have one thing in common. They have never tried life with them to know how big a difference it makes in the cold.

I know, I used to get by without them , without any accidents and I hought they were a luxury. But they are a luxury that will pay for themselves the first time you avoid a fender bender and an insurance claim, and could have even more substantial benefits if you avoid a serious accident. At that point it might be too late to decide to get them. Its not just your own driving that influences your chances of an accident. You can be the best defensive driver in the world, but if someone else fails to stop at an icy intersection, and your tires have no grip to help you stop or steer around them it wont make any difference.

I dont understand the point about disengaging (and Im not sure its true anyway)... its not relevent. You only have four palm sized bits of rubber contacting the road, providing grip for the brakes to work with. Once that rubber loosed grip, you loose stopping and steering power, regardless of whether the stopping is being done by the brakes or the transmission.


The fact that the all seasons are new I dont get either. If they are new, then keep them that way by switching to winter rubber, then the all season will still be new (and the fancy rims not salt or kerb damaged) come the spring:?

The more I hear about Piff Poffs situation, the less sense it makes to me not to do it.

New fancy rims and rubber...Doesnt he want to protect them from salt damage in the winter, or the risk of a gentle skid into a kerb?

Old rims with new rubber....you can sell the allseasons you are never going to use anyway for a couple of hundred bucks, and use those rims for winter tires, so no cost for new wheels.

Hubby can change them himself....so you can buy tires for half the price in the US and fit them yourself at no cost.

I wish I was in your situation...you can almost make the change for nothing.

All-season tires (or tyres if you prefer) are really a marketing gimmick. They cannot be a substitute for winter tires because the single most important charecteristic of winter tires is that they are made out of really quite a soft rubber. In the "world of tires" you are constantly striving for a compromise between too things:
a) good grip (which requires the tires to be extremely soft) and
b) long lifespan (which requires tires to be extremely hard)

Racing cars for example are concerned only with grip and use tires that are made out of an extremely soft compound of rubber. They grip great but wear down after just a few laps (which is why they keep changing tires during a race). Normal tires for passenger cars are a sensible compromise between these two opposing things during "normal" temperatures (i.e. spring, summer and fall). Reasonable grip and reasonable lifespan.

In extremely low temperatures however, a "normal" softness of rubber becomes very hard and brittle. The increased hardness means it doesnt grip the road very well (but would probably last ages!). Thats why we have winter tires - they are much softer than summer tires and provide the correct compromise between grip and lifespan during very low temperatures. If you were to continue using them during the summer months you would wear them down in no time because they are much too soft.

Thats why "all-season" tires are a joke because they cannot possibly increase their softness during cold weather. All rubber becomes harder when the temperature is lower so the only solution is to have different tires for different seasons. There's no way around this one. And as iaink says having tires with good grip is much more important during snow/ice than having AWD.

The key advantage that an SUV/4x4 offers is its increased clearance which means you can still travel in deep snow.

Unless the vehicle is kept until both sets of tyres are worn out buying an extra set is a losing proposition financially. It may be that some people like to have extra tyres and so to them the cost is worthwhile but it's still a cost. As you know it's not an expense that makes sense to me, I don't know of anyone outside this board who does have a second set of tyres.

Despite your famously blase attitude on this subject, just about everyone I know in real life here has snow tires. Perhaps it's the Atlantic snow that's different.

Perhaps. There's a multi-storey car park behind us here (small town Ontario), I'll go and count at lunchtime, I'd happily bet that less than 5% of vehicles have them and this is semi-urban, when you get out in the sticks nobody has snow tyres or AWD, it's all big RWD sedans and pick ups on all seasons.

perhaps not everyone has got around to having them put on yet? people are busy you know (especially in Ontario)!

Maybe but there's an inch of snow on the ground. One might think that people who use them would be using them now.

Besides, we go around this every year. Before finding this board I'd been twenty years here without hearing about snow tyres. I don't oppose their use but they're a minority interest.

snow already eh? havent had any here yet but radio said we may be due some saturday night

Not enough to shovel yet (at least not this morning) but there was enough to make driving tricky (as always the problem was visibility rather than traction) at one point I even found myself going at the speed limit.

Its a bit early for dbd to be tyre counting.

I am obviously a firm advocate of winter tires, and mine wont be going on till late november / early december, and they probably wont be a serious benefit until the new year.

Personal choice and reduced arguments - please pick on someone else now. We live in a City where the roads are cleared pretty regularly. We tend to stay close to home if the roads/weather conditions are bad. If necessary I could walk to work or catch the bus. If we lived out of town in the boonies then maybe, just maybe hubby would buy snow tyres - who knows, men are a strange breed.

You clearly dont get it. Fair enough.

FWIW if anyone out there does, shipping on 4 tires from the US was only $82.

Online I could get 4 of my particular size tires for ~$500US, including shipping, duty etc. The same tires locally were $190CDN, plus tax each. Thats worth the shipping cost.

Living in a city and having snow clearance is of no relevence as it does not raise the temperature from sub zero. Michelin say all season grip is affected at temperatures as high as +7°C

That may be so but how much is it affected is it a large amount or a really small but measurable amount? It doesn't say other than it is affected at temps as high as +7C.

I'm not going to argue the merits or not of winter tires but that sounds more like scare tactics to me.

I do think winter tires are a better plan than all seasons by the way.

Oh, I'm sure it is, after all the aim seems to have been to boost sales. Regardless I was surprised the compound starts to harden at all at "fall" temperatures... that would make all seasons seemingly even less well named. I just wanted to clear up any misconception that winter tires are solely about traction in snow and ice. Even on clear roads braking ability is seriously reduced in the cold on regular tires.

My michelin allseasons noticable start to suck once it gets down to around -10ish, which is about 2 months of the Ontario winter I guess. Out there its more like 4 months of they year isnt it steve