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Driving discipline, culture, and rules in North America are Mickey Mouse.

The reality of car dependency there means that there are people driving and owning cars who can't really afford to do it properly, nor do they know they need to do it properly (e.g., having a second set of tires for the winter). You can see this evidenced by the rust buckets on the road that look like they are one pothole away from losing part of the vehicle body. Deferred maintenance and investment everywhere and in everything …

by NetMageSCW2 hours ago|

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The United States also covers a vast difference in climate. What good are snow tires for people in South Florida, or Texas, or New Mexico? Where I live I switch between summer and all season cause we get enough snow to justify snow tires once a decade for a couple of days. This year has been the worse with two weekends with a decent amount of snow that was cleaned off the roads by Tuesday.

by dlcarrier16 hours ago|

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I wonder if it's a carryover of an old regulation that used to make sense. Modern all-season tires are better in snow than the best winter tires were several decades ago.

Also, you need studs or chains to get traction on ice. The difference between a winter tire and a summer tire is the temperature range where the rubber stays flexible. When the rubber gets hard, it will keep its shape instead of complying with the surface of the road, so it loses traction quicker. Ice is flat, so there's no difference between tire types, and there's nothing to grip on to.

by kalleboo15 hours ago|

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Nordic studless winter tires (different from Central European winter tires so also probably different from whatever you get in the US) do give some grip on ice, while all-seasons can be nearly as bad as summer tires. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-66968-2_...

The government has done ongoing research on these subjects and the regulations do get renewed (e.g. some properly rated all-seasons are now allowed)

by matttproud13 hours ago|

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Piggdekk in Norway are equivalent to North American studded tires. When I lived in the northern parts of the U.S., I had a set of these for times around freezing rains.

Beyond the questions of winter weather properties, there are adjacent tradeoffs between the tire types (outside of studded):

1. Fuel economy

2. Noise

3. Degree of particulate pollution emission

I'm sure that the all-season tires probably have some negative tradeoffs in these regards to, which yields a choose the most optimal product for the time of year. All-season tires to me seem like a convenience food for places where the weather can be legitimately bad.

One other difference that is hard to articulate to North American drivers with respect to understanding Scandinavia and roads: there are places where snow and ice will literally not be removed (maybe not even removeable) from the road when plowed (I presume until spring melt). It just becomes a thick ice pack over the course of weeks. I never encountered any roads in my life (including Northern Minnesota) that were this inclement. North American roads tend to be cleared (plowing or melting) to asphalt or pavement.

by dlcarrier13 hours ago|

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All-season tires aren't simply a matter of convenience, they offer a safety benefit. If you aren't driving at normal highway speeds, even if it's the dead of winter and the air is below freezing, your tires will heat up and the winter tires won't have as much traction. The disadvantage on dry roads can be several times what the advantage was on contaminated roads, including during the winter.

by dlcarrier13 hours ago|

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I've also seen snow tires perform worse than all-season tires, e.g: https://www.tyrereviews.com/Tyre/Michelin/CrossClimate-2.htm vs https://www.tyrereviews.com/Tyre/Barum/Polaris-5.htm

If tires complying with the standards overlap, then the standards are meaningless. When there's requirements for snow tires, but not for X brand or model of snow tire, than it's not doing any good. That's why it's important to have a snow rating that can apply to tires of any type, and if it meets that rating, regardless of the rating for dry warm weather, than it should be good to go, otherwise not.

by Tor316 hours ago|

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Indeed. The first thing I do when buying a second-hand car (I never buy new cars, what a waste of money) is to buy the best winter tires (and summer tires if needed) that money can buy (lots of that available, as I save so much on the car). I never have any problems in any conditions (and there are a lot of "conditions..")

All seasons tires are rubbish. Also the "new" ones (re sister comment).

by NetMageSCW2 hours ago|

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That hasn’t been true for a very long time.

by tristor1 hours ago|

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It actually still is true. I drive on all-season touring tires on my current vehicle because I drive across varied climates, but never in real winter conditions, that said true summer tires have much better stopping distance, better rain/wet handling, and massively better dry handling characteristics than all-season tires, and true winter tires have much better everything than all-seasons in snow and especially in ice.

All-season tires have massively improved, but /so have summer and winter tires/. So sure, your all-seasons today may be superior to very old standards for prior generations of tires, but you are still the absolute safest when you have appropriate tires on your vehicle. Tires are fundamentally all that holds your vehicle to the ground.

Also as much as I love AWD, it does basically fuck-all to help in winter conditions. The thing you need to worry about is /stopping/ not necessarily getting going again, and in both cases a FWD car with winter tires is worlds better than any AWD car on all-seasons. I swap to winter tires on my AWD cars when I spend significant time in areas where it snows (e.g. when I lived for several years in Colorado). It doesn't matter how many wheels are used to drive, all vehicles use all 4 wheels to stop, but if you have no traction you are fucked. Anyone telling you otherwise is ill-informed.