Snow roads with Bach and Winter tyres…
Skidding around like a roller skate on an ice-rink, seems to be the default position for most British motorists having to drive rear wheel drive vehicles, particularly, on snow, ice and the cold conditions of our recent winters.
Not being able to make it out of our drive last winter on the existing Michelin Pilot Primacy summer tyres, had me researching alternatives for my old 740iL.
In Germany and probably much of the rest of the colder continent, I believe it is mandatory to fit winter tyres from November to March or April. I figured there has to be good reason why they do so.
I fitted Michelin Alpin Altitude Winter Tyres, and the car’s performance on snow, ice, and slush was converted to staggering stability and grip. There is a general misunderstanding that winter tyres involve studs. This is not necessarily so. The composition of the rubber and tread patterns are entirely different. The rubber does not harden in sub-zero temperatures, and so grips the surface much more securely. Honest John, the DT’s Motoring Correspondent described them to me as changing a regular saloon’s performance on snow to better than a 4WD with regular tyres. He is absolutely correct, and they now are fitted every November, and will be staying on, until April most probably. The garage keeps my summer set for me, and changes them back again when the weather warms up.
Do yourselves a favour and for the sake of your family, invest in a set of winter tyres…they are not all exorbitantly expensive, but surely worth it to avoid skidding off the roads this winter, or even worse, having an accident which could so easily have been avoided. They are certainly cheaper than buying a chelsea tractor, and actually more effective, unless you get one with winter tyres!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Good advice, CWJ, but frankly unless you live in the Frozen North and snow is an annual event, this could prove a life-saver once every seven years or so.
We owned at least one 4WD for years, but it more a muddy lanes and towing horses issue. In twenty years in the South, I have only used the 4WD twice in snow!
But you are right, I discovered very early on that they they were not idiot proof and stopping was probably better but not by much.
Last year was difficult but was partially solved by putting two new expensive tyres on the front, which meant I could at least get my car out of the drive. The tyres were still legal, but didn’t have any grip at all!
CWJ – You have to understand that it is the ancient right of any British motorist to drive at whatever speed and style he or she chooses despite the prevailing climatic conditions and then to sue the nearest/richest/most accessible
public bodythird party when it all goes horribly wrong.OZ
OZ
🙂
I met an elderly (80+?) lady motorist from the south of England driving a hire car she had picked up forty minutes earlier at Inverness on the road featured in the video. She did not seem to realize that it was single track, as many roads are, up here. I pulled right into the hedge and stopped, when I realized she had no plans to, as she came roaring towards me, taking off both her wing mirror and mine! The Car Hirer’s insurers coughed up £900 for my wing mirror and the double-glazed front door window it smashed in the collision…
CWJ – Nice video, but £900?? I think you may be a McBandit and never mind the Michelin endorsements. I have a Range Rover with permanent four wheel drive and every bell and whistle up to and including BF Goodrich All Terrain tyres, all of which are useless when the tyres are covered in doughnuts of sticky clay and the track is adversely cambered towards a 100 metre drop. I am clenched after every rainy descent, trust me.
OZ
OZ – We used a Range Rover in Oman mainly as a weekend vehicle for “wadi-bashing” and camping in the desert. As we discovered to our cost on one particular trip with about five vehicles in convoy to the Turtle Beach at Ras al Had, when we had a double puncture and only one spare, different year’s models of range rovers’ wheels weren’t even interchangeable. Who came up with that design idea? The Bedouins used Toyotas almost exclusively as they very rarely broke down, and when they did every little village carried the most commonly needed spares.
The bill for the wing mirror staggered me too – turns out to be what they can charge for mirrors which are heated, fold in electrically, adjustable remotely, etc. etc. Assembling one of these things from the cost of spares would run you into hundreds of thousands! Maybe I should skeletonize the old lady and sell her in parts!
Everybody here has winter tyres – no longer ‘studs’ whcih were ripping up all the roads. If it’s any comfort the average driver here has no more snow-savvy than in Britain. That’s because until this year we’d had a decade of green winters.
This morning’s snowstorm…and you want to borrow my car, to drive where???
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cwaterjohn/5208230015/
I have to confess that I am not a great one for driving in the snow. About 12 years ago I experienced one of the most frightening events of my life. I was on a business trip and had driven my company car from London through France and Holland into Germany. It was February or March but for much of the journey there was not much in the way of snow and ice and I was generally unprepared for proper winter conditions. As I headed further south through Germany however, it got colder and I encountered increasing depths of snow on the side of the road. Being snug in side my warm car, I was oblivious of the outside temperature. I was driving a right-hand drive car on the autobhan where of course there is no speed limit. It is very difficult not to go fast when the Germans flash their lights at you if you have the temerity to do anything under 120mph. So there I was speeding along through the wintry landscape and I noticed that my windscreen was getting dirty from all the sludge and grit being thrown up by other cars. So I did what any fool would do I pressed my wipers to squirt water to clean the wind screen. Of course there was no antifreeze in the cleaning liquid and the whole wind screen froze up instantly and went completely opaque. I could not see a damn thing. At 120 mph that is very scary. It was not just a case of pulling off onto the hard shoulder, because the shoulder had not been ploughed and was several inches deep in snow and I did not have snow tyres. So I had to stick my head out of the window to see where I was going – luckily the road was straight- until I had slowed down enough to pull over and stop the car. Never have I been so terrified or felt such a complete plonker.
Sipu, easily done – forgetting to put the proper concentration in the windscreen washer reservoir, and very scary. Your mention of the cocoon you are in, in a warm car, in freezing conditions, reminds me of the next winter tip from bitter experience: Throughout the winter, carry heavyweight warm clothing in the boot, jump leads, a heavy duty torch, and a high viz.jacket.
The car I was driving once broke down near the Drumochter Pass on the Perth/Inverness Road in winter, in blizzard conditions. The AA took about an hour and three-quarters to get to me. I would have certainly developed hypothermia if I had not had several layers of extra clothing with me. Yet it simply doesn’t seem to occur to most people in the UK what a hostile environment it can suddenly change to, in winter. We have enough hill walkers die every year up here, from basic lack of common sense in dressing for treacherously cold, bone-freezing weather…
When I first started driving, snow was a familier visitor to the South East of the UK and my driving skills in icy conditions were honed by experience. We have gone through a long period of being without the white stuff and newer drivers are just not used to it, hence the slipping and sliding I saw in the last fall of snow. Perhaps a snap ad campaign on the box advising people what to do may help, it could be funded by the motor insureres who should be keen to minimise shunts in adverse conditions.
OMG – “Honest John” in the Telegraph does his best to encourage people to go out and invest in a set of winter tyres – you can put them on relatively cheap, or second hand, steel wheels from sources such as http://www.mytyres.co.uk (No! I don’t have anything to do with them, apart from being a satisfied customer!) Oh! and add a towrope to the list of winter essentials in the boot!
Unsurprisingly the snowgate is already shut on the Cockbridge to Tomintoul road, and I wouldn’t want to be driving to Aberdeen this morning…