Quote:
Originally Posted by conedoctor
If you could just get this through to people. I'm new to this forum but I have said the same thing 1 million times.
Why is it that the only part of your whole car that touches the ground is the part that nobody cares about. All the driver aids in the world can't do anything if the tire will not grip.
You would not wear runners skating so why should your car?
Smaller wheels and winter tires all the way and studded if you can, the sound of studs is way better than the sound of hitting a pole.
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I think we should blame the tire companies (who came up with the no-season/all-season concept) and years of consumer conditioning. I think it first started when radials became popular. Radials had much better traction than bias ply tires, and people believed that if you had radials, you didn't need winter tires. False assumption, but the fact that radials were much more expensive probably helped the myth along. Anyway, that is when I remember customers started saying that they were just going to run the same tires all season. Also, we didn't have traction aids then, other than Detroit Lockers and sandbags in the trunk; stability control, ABS, etc, were still to come along, so if you didn't have the right tires you were usually in the ditch pretty quickly. Those without proper tires had Darwin Award experiences, or close to it.
So now we have a generation of drivers who believe that winter tires are an optional extra, even in climates that get close to freezing. They even go to the mountains with summer tires ("but I am just going on the weekends for a ski trip.....") and think it is normal. And the computer traction aids just let them get further into trouble before they let go, and so we don't just get people sliding slowly off the crown of the road, instead we have major accidents with innappropriate tires as a cause.
What gets me are the number of people who don't think they need winter tires because they have AWD. We didn't put winter tires on our X3 last year, we just didn't drive it when conditions were bad. However, my 535 needed to commute to work every day. I have Dunlop Wintersport M3s, 17", on dedicated wheels. I made it up a very long and steep hill to home one night in a snowstorm, going around many stuck cars. Three of us made it to the top. One was a Dodge Power Wagon. One was a Jeep, some type of CJ or similar, with narrow tires. And my 535i with the MSport airdam, pushing snow. Great fun, but I did push a fog light out of the air dam when I broke through the plow windrow into my driveway. Good rubber and RWD trumps AWD, but not many believe it. And, you have the added benefit of being able to stop.
Anyway, I think changing society will be a slow process. Laws that require tires with the snowflake symbol for certain seasons are a good idea, IMO. I think Quebec has the right idea, and I expect those laws to spread across Canada. Not sure about the Northern US though, it may turn into a freedom issue.