Quote:
Originally Posted by DVC
I agree that the best all-seasons don't beat the best winter tires; that's not what I said.
What I said is that so called "high performance" H- and V-rated) winter tires are not appreciably better than all-season tires on snow/ice. High performance all-seasons are designed with significant compromises in order to accommodate better high speed performance in the absence of snow/ice. Again, real snow tires are much better than either all-seasons or high performance winter tires on snow/ice.
I also said that summer tires, in my experience, have been horrible in the winter - even on dry roads in sub-freezing temperatures. This is due to rubber compounds that are optimized for high temperatures, and that turn them into hockey pucks in freezing weather.
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I agree that on freezing temp summer tires are not the best choice. But same applies for all season tires! See below...
I completly disagree that H- and V- winter tires are not better on snow/ice than all season tires.
Wide Winter Tires (as H- and V- are) even outperform small winter tires on several tests! Exept traction on snow. But they have shorter braking distance on snow and naturally on wet and dry roads than smaller winter tires. (Again, comparing the same tire but in different sizes)
All-season tires lack several attributes which make them less useful than winter tires. They generally are not made of cold weather rubber compounds, they lack channeling tread patterns and come with less tread sipes than winter tires.
According to existing research, as soon as the temperature drops below 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit), a winter tire performs much better than an all-season one. The lower the temperature, the better the winter tire performs. The exact opposite happens with all-season tires.
So it's clear. If it's freezing in your place, go for winter tires. If temp stays above 45 F / 10 C go for summer tires. If you use All Season in either cold or warm, probably fine, but never as good as it could be.