Should snow tyres be a legal requirement?

Where, in my upstairs flat am I supposed to store a set of tyres?
Am I supposed to just buy new ones twice per year? And has not been 2 years on the trot, only twice in 10-11 months. Remember, it was January this year! This may not happen for another 10 years. The roads are mostly clear up here and have been for the past 3-4 days.
 
there was considerable snow december last year too.

i cant justify dedicated winter tyres yet as my current summer tyres are doing so well
 
Freefaller said:
I think they should just improve the infrastructure of managing the roads when we have a little bit of snow. Though ensuring people don't have summer sports tyres would also help - winter tyres do make a heck of a difference.
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This.

However I do have summer tyres on also but I just take it easy rather than driving everywhere at 1000000mph which some drivers on the road seem to do.
 
PhillyDee said:
Where, in my upstairs flat am I supposed to store a set of tyres?
Am I supposed to just buy new ones twice per year? And has not been 2 years on the trot, only twice in 10-11 months. Remember, it was January this year! This may not happen for another 10 years. The roads are mostly clear up here and have been for the past 3-4 days.
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I was under the impression that the larger tyre chains (ala kwik fit) were doing "Tyre Kennel" type packages, where you buy winter tyres off them and they store your summer tyres, then vice-versa when you need to change back.

You'd be going there anyway to get them fitted (unless you had two sets of wheels - which is the way I'd do it and store them in the garage, but obviously not everyone has that luxury), so it's no biggie.
 
[Corsa]Fox;17913801 said:
The problem with this is that snow in this country is irregular and random. It isnt like other places where come November the snow arrives, and in March it all goes away.
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Indeed. There was talk on the news last night of how "Finland spends twice as much keeping it's roads open in the winter", which is all well and good, but Finland's winter is a wee bit more impressive than ours and considerably more predictable.
 
Just found an article on the BBC News website making more or less the same point:

David Quarmby told me his initial impression is that the biggest problem for us is the unpredictable nature of our weather - we simply don't know when the severe weather is going to start, we don't how long it's going to last and we don't know how severe it's going to be.

Contrast that with Scandinavia where they have a pretty good idea of when it's going to start and when it's going to end and how severe it's going to be.

That makes it much easier for them to plan and decide if it's worth spending money on decent snow-clearing equipment and much harder for us - so we end up just having to put up with it.
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How about if everyone did buy snow tyres? Snow starts on day 1. How long would it take for the tyre fitting companies to change everyones tyres? A week? By that time it is likely to be gone.
 
PhillyDee said:
How about if everyone did buy snow tyres? Snow starts on day 1. How long would it take for the tyre fitting companies to change everyones tyres? A week? By that time it is likely to be gone.
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Hence why I said winter tyres and not snow tyres.

Winter tyres can (and probably should) be fitted when the temperature drops down to around 5ºc or less. The compound of the tyre is better suited to the lower road surface and air temperatures.

There is no 5-day window in which you "need" them due to snow, you just fit them come late October/early November, and remove them in March.
 
But then you encounter the problem whereby not everywhere in the country is the same.

Down here it almost never snows and when it does, it's a pathetic light dusting that causes no real trouble to anyone. The rest of the time its dry and cold most of the time, or a bit of rain. So far this winter despite temperatures of -4 I've had no issues at all on my ContiSport Contacts - no real lack of grip, there has been no traffic choas, nothing. Some of the very minor roads have been a tad icy, so you take it easy, and the usual roads are just fine.

Everyones life just continues normally. Most people down here would stare at you as if you are an alien if you suggested they moved to winter tyres because they are simply not required here.

That and many people can't even afford to buy decent summer tyres let alone decent winter tyres, so if you did make it a legal requirement you'd get loads of people fitting Wan Li winter tyres which I guarantee are noticeably worse when it isnt snowing than a half decent premium tyre.

Again we find ourselves in the midst of hugely unusual weather that is not the norm for our climate. Is our climate shifting? Nobody knows - but for now, this weather is atypical. Even Europe is having problems - airports closed in areas of Germany surely used to this sort of weather, people actually DYING in Poland, etc etc.

This isn't usual winter weather. This is something else.
 
Even some countries with sustained snowfall don't mandate winter tyres. In Germany only certain regions mandate the use of winter tyres, and suprisingly there is no requirement for winter tyres in Switzerland.

A lot of the winter tyre sites use clever wording about insurance things though, take this for example about Switzerland:

If an accident has been caused by the use of summer tires during the winter months this can lead to liability on the part of the driver
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Well duh - generally, if you CAUSE an accident, you are liable, even if you cause an accident when it's 32c outside!
 
BigglesPiP said:
Thought you paid your insurance company to take liability, so as long as that's valid you're only responsible?
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No, you are still liable. Your insurer simply acts on your behalf to meet the costs involved. Otherwise your insurer would be fined if it was careless driving, and not you, for example..
 
NO.

We dont have enough snow in this country to warrant the cost to replace 4 tyres for a couple of days worth of snow.

Winter tyres maybe, but if you dont drive like an idiot you will be fine on either as long as they have legal tread.
 
Joshy said:
Pretty sure there was some fairly bad snowfall (enough to shut london down effectively) the year before last?

And then a year or two before that there was a decent amount of snow again.
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There was a fairly light covering in Southend and up to Grays, not enough to cause chaos.
 
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