>  I have heard that in many places in the US they don't even know about
> the concept of winter tires (such as studded tires, which are used in
> Finland in winter), even at places where it snows. Seeing videos like
> this one seems to confirm this.

A lot of them use "all-weather" tyres, which are better than summer tyres in 
winter, but not as good as proper winter tyres.  The benefit is you don't 
need to swap tyres twice a year, the disadvantage is the rubber is so hard 
that the grip is terrible compared to proper summer tyres in summer.  So 
long as everybody uses them and knows how grippy they are it shouldn't be a 
problem.

FWIW here in Germany we use winter/snow tyres, but not studded tyres.  The 
winter tyres help a lot in snow, but are just as useless as summer tyres on 
ice.  It looks in that video to be ice, only studs will help you there.

>  In some countries studded tires are prohibited by law (all year round)
> because they wear the road faster. Well, I suppose it's better to have
> tons of car accidents than having to repave once in a while.

Yes it is actually - repaving every single road "once in a while" would 
cause orders of magnitude more chaos than a few accidents when it's icy. 
Unless you live somewhere with snow and ice for *a lot* of the year, it's 
just not worth it.

Post a reply to this message