As the summer has been good throughout Europe and the travel restrictions have been easing, it is now time to leave the summer tyres behind. Hopefully, they provided your vehicle with a great experience during the year. Summer tyres are great for driving on dry summer roads. They are also designed to handle any summer rain that might come during the summer, but they are not designed to handle snow, ice and slush. Slush, compared to rain, need wider grooves in the tread to be able to move slush away from the surface to maintain contact with the road surface.
There are more differences in the design than being able to remove slush from the surface. Incorporated in the product design of winter tyres is the ability to remain soft during cold winter conditions. There is a big difference in the rubber compound to ensure that the tyres remain soft and compliant during winter temperatures. If the tyres are not soft and compliant to the rad surface, they will not have any traction. They will lose their traction as the temperatures drop, and they go from being soft to hard. This is a change that can happen very rapidly as the temperatures drop.
The scary thing is that you might not notice the change, and suddenly, your tyres will change from very good summer tyres to very bad tyres for winter conditions. With the dropping temperatures, your tyres have gone from good to bad, all due to dropping temperature and thus changing characteristics of the tyre. It is key to change your summer tyres to winter tyres before you face changing conditions. A tyre change is quick and can be done well in advance before expecting temperature drops.
The winter tyres are not only designed to be soft; they are designed with the main aim to perform well on ice, snow and slush. All these challenging conditions can easily be coped with if you have the correct tyres. A studded tyres will give you an excellent grip on snow and packed ice, as well as on snow. The non-studded tyres will have a good grip on snow and ice but not as good as the studded option. For snow, they will be at least as good. So, change now and leave your summer tyres behind.
Winter tyres will keep you safe as you drive in winter conditions, but you do need to have the tyres mounted on your vehicle before the snow arrives to drive safely. What often happens is that people wait too long and finally make the change too late, when the winter weather has already arrived. As it is dangerous and, in some places, illegal to drive with summer tyres in winter conditions, you need to make sure that you initiate the change earlier. The best is to change once the temperatures start to go below 7 Celsius as below that the winter tyres outperform summer tyres.
For more information regarding winter tyres, visit: https://www.nokiantyres.com/