Kevin Wampler wrote:
> I live a couple hundred miles away from the city where that video was 
> taken, assuming that the weather there is similar to here (and I believe 
> it is) I think part of the problem is that it generally snows there 
> between zero and a couple of times per year, and most of the time it's 
> only a an inch or two which melts before the day is done.  Thus it's not 
> really worthwhile buying snow tires, since it's only very rarely that it 
> snows enough that it would be at all useful (having a tire built for 
> rain would be much more important).  Anyone here form Portland who can 
> confirm / disagree with this?

I grew up in Seattle, but I'm currently living in Portland.

This year, we had snow four times.  Each time, we got less than an inch, 
and it melted within 2 hours.

Anyway, if you think that's bad, remember that at least they had the 
(poor) excuse of an icy road.  The driving here isn't much better in the 
rain (which is rather alarming, seeing as it rains here almost as much 
as in Seattle).

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Warp wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMzeiMJQrvk
> 
>   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.
> 
>   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.
> 

My personal feeling is that if conditions are bad enough that you need 
more than your regular tires, you should just be safe and throw on some 
chains.

Our first apartment was at the top of a rather steep hill.  I loved the 
feeling of calmly driving down the lane in the morning, grinning and 
waving at all the people who had been stupid enough to try going down 
without any extra traction - and there were at least two dozen cars on 
the side :)

-- 
...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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Chambers <ben### [at] pacificwebguycom> wrote:
> My personal feeling is that if conditions are bad enough that you need 
> more than your regular tires, you should just be safe and throw on some 
> chains.

  I have the feeling that chains wear out the road 100 times faster than
studs. Additionally they wear out the tires pretty fast, they don't allow
driving very fast (ie. you probably don't want to drive along a highway
with them), they make a lot of noise, and probably can't be used for very
long distances (like 100's of km).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Chambers wrote:
> 
> My personal feeling is that if conditions are bad enough that you need 
> more than your regular tires, you should just be safe and throw on some 
> chains.
> 

Chains should go well at extreme conditions on ice, but when you'll hit 
the tarmac or gravel (or even plain snow iirc), real winter tires can 
get you better grip. It's possible that we don't actually have the most 
extreme conditions here - at least often -, but I don't recall a single 
day from past 8 years (ie. while I've had a driver's license) that I'd 
even thinked of chains instead of winter tires.

Of course the suspension of the car itself makes a lot, too.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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>  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.

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> I'm pretty sure studded snow tires aren't going to make it safe to drive 
> if you get the kind of conditions that let the car slide sideways at a 
> sedate speed without slowing for fifty meters (like at 1:02 into the 
> video).

You've never seen cars racing on ice then?  They have metal studs that dig 
into the ice and create grip - it's amazing how much grip they have.  I was 
in a taxi once in Finland and was pretty unbelievable how hard he could 
brake on the snow/ice and how fast he could go round a corner without 
skidding at all.

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> 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. 

  Yes, losing lives is a small price for not having one lane of a road
closed for a couple of days.

  Also, car accidents often close the *entire* road instead of closing
just one lane.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> 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.
>
>  Yes, losing lives is a small price for not having one lane of a road
> closed for a couple of days.

As much as you may dislike it, there is a price on human life, as well as a 
price on disruption and delays.  Would you choose that 60 million people 
were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single life? 
Where do you draw the line?  The line has already been drawn, and it's not 
worth countries that get snow/ice infrequently using studded tyres.

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scott wrote:
> 
> 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.

Lose-lose -situation, since the tires are bad at winter and terrible at 
summer ;).

> 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.

Nope. Of course there are different kinds of unstudded winter tires, but 
ie. the examples I took earlier (Nokian RSi and Bridgestone Blizzak) 
perform surprisingly well even on ice, waaay better than summer tires. 
Naturally studded tire is even better on ice, I'm not going to deny that.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> Would you choose that 60 million people 
> were all delayed by an extra 30 minutes every day to save one single life? 

  Yes?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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