Winter Safety and Tires

[SlartyBartFast]

I know winter's almost over but winter driving came up in another thread so I thought I'd trot out this piece of safety information.

Here's a question for all of you winter driver types:

Say driver Bob owns a front wheel drive car and is too cheap/poor to buy four winter tires and only wants to buy two.

What should he do?

1- Buy two good winter tires and put them in front.
2- Buy two good winter tires and put them in back.
3- Buy four cheaper winter tires.
4- Four season tires are good enough.

[SlartyBartFast]

1- Buy two good winter tires and put them in front.

This is the classic answer. But, it's wrong. While the addage of putting the tires on the driving wheels makes sense as the reason for putting two winter tires on the back of a rear wheel drive car, it is dangerous to put only winter tires in front.

Whether a car is front or rear wheel drive, you want the most traction in the back. The reason is for safety.

If you lockup only the front wheels, a car will go in a staight line and you will be unable to steer. While undesirable (and unsafe) it is at least stable and predictable. Pumping the brakes you can regain and maintain control.

If you lockup only the rear wheels, a car will likely go into a spin. This is undesirable, unsafe, unpredictable, and very difficult to regain control over.

2- Buy two good winter tires and put them in back.

This will at least give your car the advantage of greater stability in emergency situations. Braking and cornering will be safer as the backend will track correctly and not slip or lockup causing a spin.

But, on a front wheel drive you'll not gain traction and you'll have difficulty controlling the car on slippery surfaces whetehr the car is front or rear wheel drive.

4- Four season tires are good enough.

Depends on where you live. Whose four seasons?

When it's cold out even the best all-seasons become useless. Also, most all-season tires are only good for a couple of seasons if you subject them to winter conditions, so it is cheaper in the long run to have four winter tires and four all-season tires.

3- Buy four cheaper winter tires.

The best option. To save money in the long run, but four rims for the tires as well. You won't have to pay installation and balancing and the all-season or winter tires won't get destroyed during installation or removal.