Winter Tyres: Preparing Your Wheels For The Bad Weather

No matter how cautious you are as a driver in bad conditions, sometimes they can be overwhelming for our cars and lead to accidents. One of the most common causes of accidents in the winter months is down to a lack of grip to the road, but thankfully there is something you can do about this. There are a number of winter tyre options you can adopt for your vehicle this winter, so here is plenty more info.

Winter Tyres

Depending where you live in the UK you may be more aware of winter tyres than others (city drivers less likely to need them), but winter tyres are essentially a specialist tyre designed to cope with difficult driving conditions such as heavy rain, loose terrain and snow.

Though they aren’t mandatory in the UK, they are in other European countries due to the consistent bad driving conditions during the winter months. In recent years we’ve had particularly bad winters in the UK, so fitting winter tyres is becoming an increasingly popular decision taken by drivers.

How They Work

The difference between winter tyres and standard tyres is the sipes. Sipes offer hundreds of extra small edges which grip to the road. Because there are more tiny pieces or rubber working independently as the wheel rotates, the wheel can grip much better than a standard tyre which more like a single block of rubber in comparison.

Due to the increased number of grooves, winter tyres collect snow when driving on it. This initially sounds  more dangerous but the best way of driving in snow. Imagine rolling snow to create a snow man or snow ball, the more you collect, the harder and better grip the ball gathers. This is essentially how winter tyres work.

The extra deep grooves also help clear surface water as you drive, reducing the chance of aqua-planing in normal roads such as tarmac which have been subject to heavy rain fall.

They are obviously a very specialist tyre, and are made for more extreme conditions and it is for this reason they are only made to operate at low temperatures. The standard winter tyre is only supposed to be used below temperatures of 7 degrees C, and actually works worse than a standard tyre when driven in conditions above this temperature.

What’s The Cost

Thankfully the cost of winter tyres is generally the same as your standard tyre, so its not a heavy investment for conditions that may or may not surface. Because they are a more specialist tyre in this country, they can be hard to come by if you don’t invest in them by October, so you are best going after them early, even if you don’t fit them immediately.

Snow Socks

If winter tyres are a seasonal substitute, then snow socks are certainly a specialist tyre product. They are not created to drive long distances in, and are more to use in order to be put on or removed in situations involving difficult snowy conditions. For example, imagine you can’t get off your driveway because it is layered in plenty of snow. To fix this you can apply your snow socks to your current tyres for increased grip and traction to move off the snowy terrain.

How They Work

Snow socks are made from textiles, not rubber, and are aligned at a slight right angle to better grip the road. Snow and ice sticks to textile materials, which allows the tyre to grip. To apply you simply need to be able to fit your hand between the wheel and the wheel arch and wrap around like you would a sock, then roll the car slightly forward for backward to fully apply to the wheel.  It is important to apply to the opposite wheels to those which have the power, for example if your car is front wheel drive, apply to the back.

It is important to note that they should never be fitted when needing to drive on normal foods as they will become quickly shredded and ruined.

What’s The Cost

Because of their limited use and the fact that you only need one pair and not four, they come at a much cheaper price than a set of winter tyres, so can be seen as the cheaper alternative to keep in your boot during the winter if you don’t fancy committing to winter tyres. A pair can be picked up for around £70-80.

Alternatively

The alternative to snow socks are snow chains, which reapplied and used much in the same way snow chains are. However the reason we would suggest you opt for snow socks over snow chains is that they are easier to fit and are more frequently used in other countries where snow is more consistent, not something which is a great issue here.

Hopefully this will have cleared up any questions you may have had about upgrading your car tyres for wintery conditions. While winter tyres are generally a good idea in those dark and miserable months between November and March, snow socks and chains are only specialist and should be used sparingly.