Are winter tires a meme or legit? I've been car shopping

>>17461300
Some parts of the snowy world, they're required. Other parts of the non-snowy world, studded snow tires are banned. Ask around and see what the laws are.

>>17461300

if you are total commuter (car is just a tool to get you from A to B) in a place without icy/snowy condiditons - go with allseasons, or whatever your car came with and don't care at all.

if you are unlucky to live in area where you have this thing called "winter" or "snow" - just buy a set of winter tires because law most likely says you have to have them anyway.

if you are serious about cars, you have a nice set of tires for summer and one even nicer for winter - because in daily commute your normal summer tires will be just as good as any other, but on snow you are much more likely to be able to tell a difference between good winter tire and a cheapo one.

If you are real car nut, you probably have separate sets of complete wheels, one for track/togue fantasies with semislicks, one with performance summer tires for your daily in the summer, one set of high performance winter tires for winter.

If you are guy with japanese/german RWD driftmachine, you have friends from whom you "borrowed" banged wheels that you will surely return to them, you are good friends with tireshop guys and run whatever you can fit on your car - the more number of tires/wheels you have, the better - and you don't care what thread or specification they are, you will lay that rubber down anyway.

Winter tires are god tier. Saved my ass from idiots sliding through red lights several times.

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Anyone who thinks winter tires are "meme" lives in a place where you sometimes get 2mm on snowfall a couple times a year. Anyone who has driven through half a foot of fresh powder or on ice with """all-season""" tires knows they are massively inferior.

Pic related, Blizzaks got me through 200km of backroads with snow nearly a foot thick without trouble.

Here you NEED them because you cannot drive up certain hills without them, you will get stuck even with meme awd. The mustang gt examples in areas that get hit hard with snow never have winter tires because they don't drive the mustang in winter.

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>>17461300
Drove through a blizzard on Michelin Pilot Sports 2s and only got a little squirrelly once.

>absolutely LOVE driving in snow
>didn't have proper snow for the last 7 years or so

IT'S NOT FAIR

>>17461322
>in daily commute your normal summer tires will be just as good as any other

Actual summer tires become useless below 5C though, because they get rock hard and can't develop any grip.

Winter tires are good even when there is no snow because they stay soft even in freezing cold.

Just go with all seasons, winter tires are a meme. I used to live in CT and only had All seasons and never once wrecked or even had a scare. They handled just fine and were better than expected.
Now if there are laws then follow them just in case anything happens

>>17461351

not exactly true. That magical 5degC meme is just a rough treshold area and people look at it from the wrong way. It says just this:

Winter tires should not be used above 5degC because they are getting very, very soft and that combined with their not so lasting compound, much higher blocks, sipping and focus on traction grip (especially tree/arrow shaped patterns) makes them very inferior to summer tires.

However, on dry conditions on pavement your good summer tires may still outperform winter tires even when it is lightly freezing when it comes to breaking, cornering and acceleration. They seem to totally lose softness at around minus 10, until then, on dry, totally usable, it is not like they are super rock hard at plus 5, not true.

>t. guy who had to wait for new winter tires month longer and had to deal with dry winter conditions

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Depends on where you live, what type of conditions you see and so on

In an area where you only get at most an inch of snow, with no ice and traffic always going super slow during these conditions I suppose you can drive on pretty much any tires and it'll do fine

Try using summers/all-seasons in an area like mine and you'll have trouble

>>17461300
Winter tires are rarely that much better than all seasons for normal snow. Neither will get you anywhere on ice and you need studs or chains. For the rare snow storm in GA, I've never had any trouble in my fwd daily.

>>17461339
>>17461576
Not op but where I live it ranges wildly between 2mm and foot deep snow all winter. I've only ever used all seasons and have only bought new tires once, other than that it's always used tires. I have gotten stuck a few times in snow but only in rwd vehicles

>>17461632
Foot deep snow doesn't count if the roads are already completely plowed and salted/sanded by the time you get up. Snow tires are much more useful for people in rural or just non-city areas who can't always count on the roads being cleared in the morning or that the staties will be able to keep up with the snowfall during heavy storms.

If you have to ask if you need snow tires, you probably don't need them. If you do need them you're probably already running them.

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>>17461632
I can believe that, but add this info;

When its snowing really heavy; what speed do you go/does the traffic go?
How is the general elevation of your area? Lots of hills and descents, or relatively flat?
See any ice?

The thing is, I could probably get around just fine with all-season on my Hilux here, but the problem is that there are hills where I simply would not be able to stop unless the ice has been scraped and gritted, I would not be able to do 55mph and still be able to safely stop for moose crossing the road or other hazards coming up, and I'd be completely dependent on the 4x4.

With my Hakkapeliitta tires I run RWD for pretty much all of the winter (with no weight in the back), only switching to 4x4 when towing, pulling people free, going up steep hills, or when the snow starts getting deeper