There are some good reasons why you need to change to winter tires during the winter. Especially if you plan to drive in winter conditions. Winter conditions don’t just mean snow and ice; it is also low temperatures. When the temperature drops below 45° F, the rubber compound used in all-season tires will become hard and lose its flexibility. When you have soft tires, the tires can conform to the road micro-structure of the road surface. This happens as the rubber is pressed into the small cavities of the road surface to create a very good grip, this is lost when you have hard tires that can’t be pressed into the micro-cavities.
When you use all-season tires to drive during wintertime, you will notice that they have severely reduced grip when the temperature drops below 45°F. This can be very dangerous and reduces your safety. Even if there isn’t any snow or ice on the roads, you should have winter tires on your car safe driving and optimal performance. All-season tires also have a tread pattern that is optimized for dry and warm all-season roads. They can also handle wet surfaces as well, as they have been optimized for providing good grip on wet roads. They can’t however create much grip on snow or ice. They have no tread features to handle snow or ice. As good as the all-season tires are on summer roads, they are almost equally bad on winter roads, as they haven’t been designed for that.
So even if you choose a non-studded tire, that is, a winter tire that doesn’t have metal studs, this tire is still designed with winter conditions in mind. The rubber compound used in tires that are designed for winter use will not get hard even at low winter temperatures. The tread has been optimized for creating grip both on roads that are covered by snow and ice. The tread pattern will provide you with the necessary grip and traction for safe driving on ice, snow and slush. They will reduce the risk of slushplaning, where the car, in a similar way as you lose contact with the road surface when driving on water. Because of this, your vehicle will end up losing contact of the road and will instead be pushed up on the slush layer that is ontop of the road surface and can’t be pushed away by the tires.
If you live in a location that don’t really have severe winter weather, you might be able to use all-weather tires. If you choose a winter approved all-weather tire, it will have the properties of both an all-season and winter tires combined into one so that you have a perfect all-year-round tire. This means that you always have tires on your vehicle that are safe to drive with. This can increase your overall safety as you are safe in all conditions, regardless of where or when you need to drive.
For more information on which winter tires, you should choose for safe winter driving, visit: https://www.nokiantires.com/