Winter is quickly approaching. Even while the holidays are a time for great food, hot cocoa, and snowman-shaped sweets, the winter also brings several challenges, the biggest of which is probably navigating slippery or snow-covered roads.
This might be particularly challenging if you plan to travel far to visit family. To secure yourself and your family on icy roads, take additional precautions. The greatest thing you should do is invest in a solid pair of winter tyres if you want to drive on ice or snowy roads.
All drivers who travel in cold or snowy conditions need a winter pair of a car tyre. Furthermore, purchasing them doesn’t always require breaking money!
Discover everything about purchasing your first pair of winter tyres, like what they are, how often they price, what to do with winter tyres in the summertime, and why weather-specific tyres are so crucial for everyone’s security, continue reading our thorough guide.
What Are Winter Tires?
Winter tyres maintain adequate traction in subfreezing weather on icy, snowy, and slushy roadways. Deeper tread levels and unique tread layouts on the tire’s rubber structure are intended to keep the tyre flexible while improving traction on icy winter roadways. How many individuals are unaware that there is a distinction between all-season versus winter tyres is surprising.
Reasons Regular Tires Cannot Handle Snowy Conditions
Consider looking at the tyres’ tread patterns if you wonder why ordinary tyres don’t handle winter, ice, frost, or slush particularly well. This is because regular tyres lack the special tread patterns needed to maintain traction in snow and ice conditions.
Do Winter Tires Make A Difference In Drive?
The main way that cold-weather car tyres distinguish from conventional tyres or all-season tyres is because they are comprised of a different type of rubber. Winter tyres feature a unique type of rubber that allows them to function differently, even if you may not be ready to see them with your naked eye.
As temperatures decrease, the rubber of regular tyres hardens, making it more difficult to allow them to grip the ground safely. For at least a portion of the year, most tyres start this process immediately as the temperature falls below 45 degrees F (7 degrees Celsius). In contrast, snow/winter tyres comprise a specific rubber that maintains flexibility in cold climates to improve traction.
Although this increases safety, there is a disadvantage: the flexible rubber relaxes and ages more quickly than all-season tyres.
Some Major Differences Between Winter Tires And All-Season
- Rubber composition
- Tread depth and pattern
- Sipes
1. Rubber Composition
Flexible rubber parts of winter tyres don’t stiffen in the cold. Unfortunately, all-season (or ordinary) tyres typically don’t, so when you need your tyres to be flexible and grippy, they may contract and harden.
2. Tread Depth And Pattern
Compared to conventional tyres, winter tyres often feature a deeper tread that is much more purposefully made for draining moisture and establishing contact with the roadway. Standard tread patterns and depth are found on all-season tyres.
3. Sipes
Having sipes, or tiny slots in the tread, which act as bitten edges to grasp the surface in snow and ice, the tread designs are made to be deeper to drain moisture. Lower siping means less grip on normal tyres.
How Do Winter Tires Work On The Road?
You will probably want to look at the distinctive tread as soon as you browse the available winter tyres. Winter tyres function by utilizing distinct snow tyre tread patterns and specific, flexible rubber to grip the ground.
Winter tyres contain a feature known as “high sipe density”. The sipes of a tyre that is still pliable open because it rolls, and indeed, the two corners bite into the snow or ice. For improved grip, these are frequently shaped into a zigzag at angles that are perpendicular to the tread pattern.
