Why winter tires are dangerous in winter
Far from always, as it turns out, “changing shoes” for the season is a good thing. Winter tires can play a lot of cruel jokes with the car owner, who recklessly trusted the "fairy tales" of marketers of tire concerns and transport officials.
A whole generation of motorists has grown up, which almost without exception is sure that the main guarantee of safe driving in the cold season is the presence of winter tires in the car. These people do not even suspect that in winter, in principle, you can also ride on summer tires. In the USSR, for example, there was just car tires (and not summer and winter), which would not fit into modern standards even for the most budgetary and unpretentious summer tires. And in this "summer" the whole country somehow traveled all year round and did not get killed. And now, as soon as the "responsible leaders" blurt out from the screens that it's time to change summer tires to winter ones, citizens rush to arrange queues in front of tire shops.
Increased suggestibility in the "wheeled" sense is dangerous because blind faith in winter tires does not allow you to see the obvious "pitfalls" that arise during the operation of such wheels. First of all, I would like to especially “congratulate” the car owners who put winter tires on their cars immediately after about three weeks ago various officials and self-proclaimed “auto experts” began to come out with appropriate advice and recommendations in the electronic and print media. As a result, winter tires have been riding on the roads of the European part of Russia for almost a month now in conditions of positive temperatures, that is, they wear out quickly (wear rubber and lose spikes) on completely non-slippery asphalt.
As they say, a trifle, but unpleasant - in the future you will have to buy new winter wheels earlier than it could be. But this, in principle, is nonsense, it does not affect safety (we change the wheels for her sake!) Not affecting.
Much sadder is that the installation of winter tires can, on the contrary, provoke an accident. Now it has become mandatory to glue the “Ш” sign on the windows of cars equipped with studded tires. They usually sculpt it on the rear window, warning those driving behind about the supposedly shortened braking distance of the car “on spikes”.
In fact, this sign should not be hung on the back, but on the front of the car. Firstly, so that traffic police inspectors can see from afar which driver of which car can be fined 500 rubles for his absence. And secondly, so that the vehicles in front know that they have a car on their tail, which slows down much worse on clean and ice-free asphalt than a car without spikes in the wheels. The fact is that the spikes help only on ice, and on asphalt or concrete they slow down about as “wonderful” as steel skates, that is, in no way. It turns out that changing tires to winter spikes, especially in cities where snow is removed well from the roadway, only reduces driving safety.
