I do not fit winter tyres to my car and I do not intend to. This is my rationale, though this year I'm going to make a big effort not to internet-rage on the subject every 10 seconds.
1) I live in Devon. Down here, snow is very rare. It was on the ground for about 2 weeks tops last year. During this two week period I was still able to get around despite the snow. Yes, I experienced a lack of grip on the minor road to the main road but I drove to the conditions and once on the gritted main road, had no issues.
2) I do not buy into the blanket statement that under 8c, winter tyres are better. Logically, this cannot be the case. There cannot be an arbitary temperature where every single tyre of Type A outperforms every single tyre of Type B. Given that 10% often seperates the performance credentials of the top end wet weather high performance tyres, how can a winter tyre be 10% better than 'all summer tyres'? It makes no sense. The comparisons are also often very, very general. You'll see graphs showing 'A summer tyre'. What summer tyre? A Ling long? A Pirelli P6000? A Pilot Sport 3? What? There is probably 30% performance difference between a P6000 and a Pilot Sport 3, so does that mean if a winter tyre is 10% better than a P6000 under 8c, that logically a PS3 is 20% better than the winter tyre? Who knows.
Once I did see a test which actually bothered to include a named, decent high performance tyre. And suprise suprise - it trounced all the winter tyres in every single test bar the snow one, where it predictably performed absolutely dreadfully and therefore ended up coming last to cries of 'Look how great winter tyres are'. Yea, useful.
3) I would purchase winter tyres if I covered a lot of miles per year in areas of the country where the chance of encountering packed snow on the carriageway was high. I'm not going to sit here and argue that winter tyres are not better than summer tyres on the snow. They are, end of story.
4) In this country, it doesn't snow much. Yes, really. It doesn't snow much. It might feel like it does, because when it does snow for a whole 3 weeks we have blanket 24/7 news coverage and doom mongering headlines. but think WHY we have this. Why does everyone go bonkers? Why is it lead item on the news for 3 weeks? Why does it cause economic output to fall? Because its a RARE WEATHER EVENT. Go to Austria or parts of California where snow arrives in October, covers everything, and doesn't leave until May. THAT is proper winter and THAT is where winter tyres and snow tyres/chains are a complete no brainer. Which, coincidently, is also why many countries with that weather pattern have legislation around the use of such tyres.
I actually drove to Scotland last Christmas - for much of the trip I was sat on the M5 and M6 at am ambient temperature of up to 9c, on a wet Motorway. Until somebody can categorically demonstrate that 'Random winter tyre' would have offered me a safety advantage of the class leading wet performance tyre I had fitted, I'm not bothered, thanks very much. And you'll need to do better than 'Michelin Super Extreme WinterTastic Performa+ outperforms 'GENERIC SUMMER TYRE' by 10%'.
If I lived in Aberdeen I might have a different opinion, but as long as I live in the South of England, I won't. There is far too much bandwagoning on the internet these days.
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