Winter tyre keys, the perfect alternative to snow chains

Winter tyres are a little-known option in Spain, yet their safety performance at this time of year makes them an option you should consider.

Winter makes roads more slippery than at other times of the year. Rain, tree leaves, ice and snow sometimes turn roads into real skating rinks, as we have been seeing in some areas of the country in recent days. The arrival of these heavy snowfalls that are affecting the whole national territory make winter tyres a more than advisable alternative to traditional snow chains.

Winter tyres are still a little-known option in our country, but using them in these conditions provides an important safety margin at the wheel. In other European countries, sales of this type of tyre exceed 30%, but in Spain they barely reach 2%.

Winter tyres reach their optimal range of use whenever temperatures are below seven degrees Celsius. In those conditions, and thanks to their special compounds and tread patterns, winter tyres provide greater traction on slippery surfaces such as ice, snow or water.

Greater traction and driving safety

As an example, according to tests carried out by Goodyear, travelling at 80 km/h on snow, a vehicle fitted with summer tyres travels 112 metres before stopping, compared with 70 metres for a vehicle with winter tyres. These 42 metres of reduced braking distance with winter tyres can be key to avoiding an accident if we have to perform an emergency stop on snow.

They avoid fitting chains, a very dangerous manoeuvre

By fitting winter tyres to vehicles, you avoid the complicated and dangerous manoeuvre of fitting chains, an emergency remedy that generally forces the vehicle to stop at the edge of the road, which sometimes has no hard shoulder or the necessary lighting, and to carry out the complicated task of fitting chains with barely any visibility and exposed to the cold.

Another advantage of winter tyres over chains is that they are fitted on both axles and not only on the driven axle, which guarantees the perfect operation of the vehicle’s safety systems, such as ABS, traction control, stability control and all the advanced systems that vehicles can nowadays be equipped with.

Additional expense or optimised wear?

There is also the idea that winter tyres are a significant economic expense, when the reality is the opposite. Summer tyres, used in winter conditions, wear out faster and therefore their service life is reduced. Thus, if you swap summer tyres for winter ones at the right time and store them properly, both sets of tyres will extend their service life and save money for the driver.

The DGT already recommends winter tyres on its road signs

The Directorate-General for Traffic (DGT) already recommends the use of winter tyres as the main option over chains in adverse conditions.

Nowadays it is common for both the illuminated road signs and the information campaigns the DGT regularly launches to recommend winter tyres, in addition to chains, when it is cold or when snowfall is forecast.

Source: Goodyear