Winter salt on roads toxin? Tires wearing off too.

@Celia said:
@Guideboatgut
How is a snow tire not a winter tire? Everyone winter set I have ever had mounted has softer rubber and much thicker treads, with an aggressive tread pattern. I just looked and the usual nomeclature is winter/snow tires on web sites. Just to keep this conversation a bit less confusing…

Winter/snow tires remain just that, per Consumer Reports and the tire sites. The new kid on the block is called an all-weather tire (versus an all-season tire) which can be left on the vehicle year round.

From “Car and Driver” magazine: “If you need true cold-weather, slush-cutting, black-ice-gripping winter tires, stick with those that you need to swap on and off. If you’re in, say, the Cincinnati-to-Nashville latitude and short-lasting winter squalls occasionally threaten to leave you stranded, the all-weather tire is a one-tire solution that might be worth looking into.”

https://blog.caranddriver.com/all-weather-tires-explained-merging-all-seasons-and-winter-tires/

I’ll stick with my four trusty snow tires.

@Guideboatguy
Two things. One is that all winter/snow/whatever you want to call them tires are optimized for a given set of conditions. All are better than all season tires in snow, but some behave better than others when there is not snow cover. So the Hankook IPikes I have come to like are considered to be less skiddy than some other snow tires when the pavement is bare. This is a useful trait in a climate with treated roads and winter temperatures that often resolve at or just above freezing. For people who are climbing thru snow cover all the time like a couple of hours north of here, like dirt roads, they may sacrifice some security on bare road to get tires that can be better at getting them up the snow covered country driveway from hell.

The Blizzaks (also Nokiasn) tend to be tires to which people who have to do snow a lot of the time can be extraordinarily loyal. I just found a comparison of Hankook IPikes versus the Blizzaks from someone who tried them side by side - the conclusion was that they are both fine tires that use different technologies to achieve the same purpose.

The second is that winter tires are like the others - there are crap tires, middle of the road tires and really expensive ones. Overall they perform better as the price tag goes up.

Both of these tires, and everything else in the winter group, is not going to last as long if you drive it in summer temperatures. Some argue that none of these tires are as good as three season tires in rain. I stay out of that one because I swap out the tires anyway. The one kind of tire that I have won’t use again, because they have such poor grip on a wet road, is studded tires. I had a skid one spring with them that would not have happened with a regular tire. It it is horribly icy I just don’t drive.

Personally, I have gotten up and down driveways from hell in a variety of cars and tires. Including a number of cars that most people would have said were no-gos even with good snow tires on them. In the end it is still the driver having a sense of how to work with the snow. You won’t win if you set up a battle to overcome it - the white stuff will take the prize every time. But you can have a pretty sane conversation if you have good tires on the car.

@Rookie
Closed out and caught up to your post. I would agree with the magazine. The tires on the newe Rav4 I just got are Bridgestone true all-weather tires, one of the newer breed. And as above, they are doing noticeably better than the three season jobs. I have had them in enough winter to be able to tell. They are also an unusually dense weave, maybe this is common for these tires…

But if I were still in the position I was in a few winters ago, where the car’s ability to manage snow could make a crucial difference in getting someone to a local hospital, even in this relatively urban area I would probably have gotten a set of Hankook iPikes by now. There is just something about that soft grippy feeling…

I run Nokian Hakkapelitta R2 snow tires, typically from Thanksgiving to Easter. They’re true snow tires, but they handle normal driving surprisingly well, too. However, I would not use them in the summer, as they’re not designed for high temps and will wear too quickly.

i’ve always saved money over the long run by keeping my snow tires on a second set of rims (which I usually have been able to pick up on Craigslist for $15 to $25 each. Mounting and balancing around here costs around $15 per tire, Having the spare set is not only an economic savings but it’s nice to have 4 extra wheels with tires mounted handy in case of an unrepairable flat in the fair weather set. Plus it means I can get them swapped out more quickly. The garage that I use will usually switch the sets for me at seasonal changes for nothing or not more than $5 each when I take the car in for normal services.

@string said:

And while WE worry about long term, India, China, and many other nations could care less.

I don’t believe that WE have anything to feel smug about. My experience is that people from India and China are exactly like people everywhere else, but they may put more priority on day to day survival by necessity. One man I know in China likes to fish but can only do it at night because he’s always working…to make less than $20K annually. I have never seen anyone more awestruck by nature than people from India and China that I have taken canoeing. I think we need to be careful about assuming that the actions of a nation’s leader represent the beliefs and priorities of the population. Even looking just at governments, WE are the role models that decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

Sorry String. I hope your next kayak weighs 20 pounds and cruises at 8 knots…you just hit a bit of a nerve with me.

Tom

These notions of population growth among nations is a common misperception but a big one.

In fact, though China and India both had high birth rates of around 42 per 1,000 around 1960, BOTH countries have enacted aggressive policies to reduce population growth since then and both have seen enormous reductions in those birth rates. China is now just slightly BELOW the USA in 12.4 annual births per 1,000 (the USA is 12.5). India is down to 19.3 and is dropping at a steadier rate than China, which has leveled out somewhat in the past 5 years. The greatest birth rates are in Africa and more impoverished and war-torn states of the Middle East and Central Asia, which also have high infant mortality rates.

Furthermore, rates around 12/1,000 represent a fertility rate per female of around 1.9 in the USA and even less in China because of the disproportionate number of females to male. In developed countries, a rate of 2.2 births per woman is needed just to maintain current population levels. If the US cuts back on immigration, as the current administration is seeking to do, our population will progressively shrink as we are below replacement level. Since we have disgraceful rates of infant mortality on top of that, population shrinkage will happen even more quickly. That’s actually beneficial for the world overall, since each American consumes a higher percentage of world resources than any other nationality.

China is pursuing alternative energy generation at a much higher rate than the US also. They stand to benefit enormously from our government pulling back from the solar and wind power markets when the rest of the world is hungry for that technology and products. They are stepping up as we step down.

@TomL said:

@string said:

And while WE worry about long term, India, China, and many other nations could care less.

I don’t believe that WE have anything to feel smug about. My experience is that people from India and China are exactly like people everywhere else, but they may put more priority on day to day survival by necessity. One man I know in China likes to fish but can only do it at night because he’s always working…to make less than $20K annually. I have never seen anyone more awestruck by nature than people from India and China that I have taken canoeing. I think we need to be careful about assuming that the actions of a nation’s leader represent the beliefs and priorities of the population. Even looking just at governments, WE are the role models that decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

Sorry String. I hope your next kayak weighs 20 pounds and cruises at 8 knots…you just hit a bit of a nerve with me.

Tom

Tom, I have been to China when you couldn’t see the sun for a week because of smog and I have never seen nastier water. I’m sure individuals appreciate clean water and air as much as we do but the government is focused on jobs and some industries will cut costs any way they can.
Nothing to be sorry about.

@bnystrom said:
I run Nokian Hakkapelitta R2 snow tires, typically from Thanksgiving to Easter. They’re true snow tires, but they handle normal driving surprisingly well, too. However, I would not use them in the summer, as they’re not designed for high temps and will wear too quickly.

This is a great tire for snow indeed. We visited a relative in MI for an occasion. Helped my uncle install the new set of Hakkapellita tires, bilstein shocks and led light bars on his truck. Made a huge difference driving in snow. He also got another set of wheels and tires for summer.