All Season, All Weather, or Winter Tires

Buzz words and these descriptive terms don't mean as much as the results of a search of, "tire traction ratings" on the net.

But, what do I know? I live in the desert most of the time.

In Canada ice and snow are simple facts of life that we learn to live. I have a friend teaching at a University in Scottsdale and he likes it there but comes back each summer. He gets the best of all, I guess. The arctic is also a desert but I think you would need good traction. The traction ratings you refer are based on wet cement surfaces and do not apply to ice and snow. As a teen I always drove on very worn tires with rear wheel drive. Traction was very low. We could easily Fishtail and 360, somewhat fun on back roads. Not so much when you left the road.

When I move North, I plan to see if metal stud tires are legal in the area I move to. If so, I plan to purchase steel rims from a junkyard and put stud tires on them, mud grip for all the driven wheels.

Come bad weather time, I'll swap the wheels until spring.

I've even imagined a cottage industry of providing wheels, tires, mounting and storage for other drivers. An old gas station would do fine, all the necessary equipment and storage would be there already.

Hell, why would someone from the Virgin Islands want to start a winter cottage industry in the great white north. Find a summer cottage industry and live in the Virgin Islands when its cold up here. Where I live, Ontario, studded tires and chains are illegal all year on provincial and county roads. Are the Virgins warm in winter? How's the snorkling and diving? I have seen temperatures as low as minus 63 degrees F about 400 miles north of Lake Ontario. At those temperatures, even the tires get out of round for the first 10-20 miles of driving.

Can't live here forever, don't trust the medical care. Yeah, it's warm all the time, even hot most of the time. We actually look forward to the few weeks around Christmas when the average temp is just below 80f., that we call the cool, cool of winter.

The diving, snorkeling, and sailing is the best anywhere. It's just the islands that suck, the victims of overpopulation, lax moral fibre, and pitiful work ethic. Uncle Sam spends gobs of money here, but you would never know it.

I don't understand the problem with studs, they can't tear the roads up any more than all that freezing and ice. I want to move to hill country, how can a car get up icy roads without studs? Or down icy roads, eek!

I had a brother live 3 years in Bermuda, who was ready to leave. Three years was enough. I didn't mind taking vacation to visit.

Ontario banned studs and chains because they put cost of repair of highways over safety. Although if you can't afford to repair potholes on high speed roads, they too could be a big safety hazard.The studs were doing most of the damage in the south where most roads don't have snow and ice except briefly after snow storms. The roads get a lot of de-icing with salts and we are well equipped with snow plows. I would guess that in winter the roads are snow/icy about 5 to 10 percent of the time and clear the rest. I have to go touch wood now or it will snow every day this upcoming winter.

Slight correction to three season tires. All season tires are "No Season Tires". They are a compromise that is acceptable for most of the year to people who do not need or demand the last erg of performance from their cars at any time.

Winter tires are as much a safety issue as a performance issue in my mind. First off, all season tires harden off at about 0 F and provide poor traction at that and colder temperatures. Our snow clearing practices have evolved over the decades to where purpose built winter tires are not an absolute necessity. When you add in All Wheel Drive, the poor traction of all season tires is reduced because of the tractive abilites of having all four wheels driving. In many systems the front and rear axles have slightly different ratios so that there is an added bit of traction some what similar to a fly crawling up a window (not exact comparison, but close).

If you were to put purpose built winter tires on an AWD, the added taction would amaze you because you have maximized available traction not just for acceleration, but for cornering and stopping. The most common problem with an AWD with All Season Tires isn't the ability to get moving on ice or snow, it is that the drivers are lulled into thinking their vehicle can stop and turn as well as it acclerates. That is were winter tires show their worth.

My preferred system is to have the tires mounted on a spare set of rims. That way if I am caught at home by an early storm, I can put them on myself. The preferred method is to have my local tire shop do the work, but some years it just doesn't work that way.

As for cost, I made the decision to have high performance winter tires on alloy rims for my car. Total cost was about $2,000 CDN. It looks great year round (vanity at work). My other car has a set of steel rims and normal winter tires and the cost was about $900. The short term benefit is that I am able to manouver around or out of the way of vehicles that I would otherwise might have hit. With a $700 deductable, anytime I can avoid an accident that I may be at fault in, I'm in favour of it. Or you can look at it as $900 is less than a hood, girlle, rad and fender. Long term, my summer performance tires last several seasons of driving longer.

As for Quebec, I think the government mandated winter tirs out of safety concerns. Quebec drivers are enthusiasts and the winter varies from the -30s to the plus 10s and they get several feet of snow a year in places. All circumstances that indicate a high accident rate in the winter.

In Saskatchewan, we get cold, but not a lot of snow. Our roads are clear for the most part, but there can be weeks of ice that just doesn't wear off. Using four winter tires is as close as we can get to having normal driving conditions in the winter.

One other point to mention is that winter tires all have the symbol of a mountain with a snowflake on the side wall. Desigantions such as M+S or Mud and Snow or Traction King do not mean it is a winter tire. Without that symbol it isn't a winter tire and yes somewhere there should be traction standards for winter tires. The other thing is that if you do use winter tires, even though they meet the same standards, some brands do better under certain conditions than others, so if you are thinking of geting some tires, talk to a few other drivers to see if they are happy with their purchases.

Only you can decide what is best for your family, given climate, driving condtions and driving ability.

My $.02 worth

GA lots of information. Thanks.

I personally always have two sets of tyres, one for summer and one for winter.....

I ahave used all season tyres and find them too soft (even with extra air) in the summer and too hard in the winter.....

Just sell the tyres off that you do not require is my best offer.....

Go to tirerack.com

They test tires in all types of conditions, and have feed back from customers.

I just installed the top-ranked high performance all season tire on my vehicle. It had the best of every condition- dry, wet, light snow, heavy snow and ice. These tires had better traction on ICE than some had on dry concrete. As an added bonus- they are certified as having "low rolling resistance" so they yield higher than normal gas mileage.

Wow! And they only cost 50 dollars each with a money back guarantee in the event of rain and free coffee for two years!

What a joke!

No- they cost $87.50 each and are warranted for a minimum of 60,000 miles wear- free replacement during first year and pro-rated after that.

I drive a hybrid that puts a lot of power to the road during acceleration- electric drive at full torque plus the engine- so tires tend to spin on wet surfaces. Absolutely no problem after the new tires replaced OEM tires.

Not sure what your problem is- I just passed on a bit of knowledge to help someone who asked for the help. What positive information did you have to provide?

No positive information at all - just countering the simplistic stuff I see that has no backup.

how can a website address of a reputable national company that contains qualified testing results plus access to "real world" user comments be considered "simplistic with no backup"?

Advertising for suckers to believe possibly?

Traction in snow comes down to two things, how much surface do you have to push against and how much shear strength does the "block" of snow have that you are pushing against. The tire has to "push off" of something. Taking that into consideration, finding a tread design that both compacts a wide wall of snow and has a lot of forward, and rearward, facing vertical surface area incorporated into the tread design to push against that wall of snow, should provide a good forward, or rearward push-off. Additionally, good cornering control comes from a tread design that has sufficient vertical surface area facing sideways. I have determined, over many years and many sets of tires on various types of vehicles, that for me, I'm sold on tires that have the unidirectional V style tread design. There are a handful of manufacturers using this design. They are mainly advertised as wet weather tires, in which they function well by "pumping" water out of the way to keep water from "lubricating" with the contact patch, which increases wet weather traction. In snow, the V design provides an almost full tire width of vertical wall, and the relatively wide tread spacing compacts a wide block/wall of snow to push off against, although the direction of the forces are vectored. Cornering traction is likewise improved. Some manufacturers also incorporate higher than normal amounts of pumice into the tread rubber compound, which improves traction in icy conditions. I have even found improved traction on damp days at greasy traffic stops.

Hi,

I wrote up a long story of experience this morning, but lost it when my internet connection dropped before previewing, so here goes again!

Definately worth it as they can save your's or someone else's life in over 20 winters using them. Saves all around on insurance costs too as usually you come out the loser in a crash and it just makes the rates go up for everybody. I too keep them mounted on a set of rims for them. I have mostly used studded winter tires for that bit of extra traction. When I first bought them I had to order them in as all seasons were the normal then. I think I was thought to be a bit weird to get winter tires then , but the tire shops here now stock and sell a lot of them. A CBC TV documentry on studded winter tires about 10 years ago really caused sales to take off too according to a local tire shop. Optional studs may give longer stopping distances on dry pavement though, but I drive slower in the winter so that's okay.

I live in Manitoba where the winter temps and conditions can really vary and they definately saved my life on a small front wheel drive car I bought over 20 years ago as I found even with them black ice and a bit of snow on top or slush can be very scary. I learned when the steering got a bit nervous or light, slow way down. I was all over the highway trying to regain control till the studs bit when I scubbed off speed. Lucky no one was coming the other way that instant I lost control! I wasn't going near the speed limit either. The best winter tires available now are probably quite good without studs. I drive old solid axle part time 4WD trucks now as the sacrificial winter vehicle to the road salt with studded winter tires as I found they work the best. Besides I don't like FWD for repair and the handling reasons I mentioned and I think they're dangerous without stability control. FWD vehicles gives one a false sense of confidence till they suddenly snap out of control which is rarely possible to regain. Some RWD vehicles can be scary too so one must test them and ask around.

If there is enough tread left after 2-3 years they can be used as summer tires too, saving some money. On studded, the new small studs they use now aren't too hard to pry out.

After having seen a number of deadly winter accidents we should stay home in conditions of blowing snow and icy conditions on our highways as we can't help the other guy from hitting us too. I know work precludes that so we need more rail transportation. Maybe more common closing of highways under bad conditions is the answer. It's mostly never done here till a bad accident blocks the highway.

So definately worth buying!