It's not a case of ability though. I could do it myself no problem, but I don't want to waste two hours of my precious weekend doing it. Plus which, I challenge you to remove my wheel nuts without an air wrench.

You can't spare two hours to increase your personal safety and that of others?

No, I'd pay someone else to do it. My point is the argument that people would present if it were to be proposed as a law.

I had to remove the axle hub nuts on a car to change the brake discs. I used a 3m scaffold pole as an extension to the socket spanner to get the torque, so a few wheel nuts wouldn't be a problem.

You'd need to pay a garage to store them for you too, unless you have room yourself. A lot of people don't.

Well we might have no choice to be fair. We are a Northern European country after all and if this global warming lark pans out as expected then we'll be seeing more snow and ice. Asking someone to splash out on winter tyres/wheels, which is already mandatory in some jurisdictions, isn't a bad idea given the obvious safety benefits that brings.

I tend to have my car serviced at six-monthly intervals. Provided the garage had sufficient storage space, I could time my service schedule so they could swap the wheels at the same time.

Simples.

Now, who's going to lend me enough cash to buy a complete spare set of alloys and tyres for my car?

I don't have a garage. The road I park on is heavily travelled all day, pretty much. Am I supposed to go swapping all four wheels on my car in a busy street?

Jon

Well one side will be pavement, non?

The boss was cursing his BMW today, and talking about a soft top Defender instead.

+1

I have storage space, so I could have a second set of wheels, but then I couldn’t get them all in the car in one go.

I suppose I could use the current wheels for winter, and a more posy set for summer. However, I doubt even winter treads would have got my car off the drive and onto the road this morning.

I can't believe how many times I've had to say this over the last few days so if I manage to sound harsh I apologise.

Winter tyres are NOT just for snow and ice. They are designed specifically for the special conditions that winter generates (e.g. increased rainfall, standing water, lower temperatures, dirty tarmac, etc.). They're made from a rubber compound that provides better grip at lower temperatures. They're usually designed with stronger sidewalls to stop them getting damaged if you have to deflate them slightly on soft or slippery surfaces. They have much deeper grooves and a different groove design to allow them to displace much more standing water before aquaplaning. They also usually have an altered profile to aid grip on dirty roads.

Even in a winter without snow or ice, the grip available for fair weather tyres is drastically reduced. Stopping distances dramatically increase due to the reduced grip and thinking distances increase due to the poor light.

I hope you can see that winter tyres aren't just for something that happens only rarely. Winter happens every year and every year the roads get more dangerous because people think that they can drive in exactly the same way as they did in summer. As far as I'm concerned, the driver who doesn't use winter tyres in winter is akin to the man who doesn't use headlights in fog.

HTH

@Rusty +1

The snow has gone now, but the residual water froze to a flat ice sheet this morning on the car park outside Lidl, where I park when I am Tina's.

An old Primera came racing onto the car park, crunched its was at just under 30 across the car park. He steered around the side of the building, without slowing down, stopped quickly, did a U-turn and pulled up outside the bakery, all on ice, without skidding or wheelspinning.

As Rusty says, and as I've said several time in this thread, Winter tyres are for winter conditions, not necessarily snow.

Summer tyres are good down to about 8°C, below that they offer poor grip. The relatively thin tread depth and the pattern with lots of rubber for the road mean that they provide excellent grip in the summer, when the roads are dry, but have enough pattern to cope with some rain. You can use them down to 1.5mm.

Winter tyres have a much more cut out pattern, which gets more rain or snow out of the way, providing more grip in wintery conditions - here the rule of thumb is O bis O (Oktober bis Ostern - October until Easter). The compound and tread pattern make for better grip on greasy, leafy, icy, wet or snow covered roads. If the snow is too deep, then snow tyres, with studs are needed.

England has pretty much the same climate as Lower Saxony and the tyres make sense here. For the 5 - 10 days of snow we generally get here, snow tyres wouldn't make sense. But for the rain, leaves and frosty mornings we get here, they make a lot of sense; as well as being a legal requirement.


I'm sorry, but temperatures below 8°C and frosty morning happen quite regularly in England! Or at least they did before I moved abroad...

Edit:

Here it is €40 for tyre swap and storage.

I store them at the back of the garage or in the cellar. A neighbour keeps them in the garden shed.


A lot of people do that here - although my car has an annual service at the moment.


I was lucky, I got a complete set of 17" alloys with my car (18" for the summer), but given the state of the roads in winter, with salt etc. most people don't bother, they get a cheap set of steel rims, painted black, and have done with it. It doesn't look as pretty, but who gives a t?

lets get something straight …
no renewal of any roads has been undertaken in the HW (bucks) area for over 10 years
they have patched on top of patches that they are repatching

no new tarmac for any of the main roads has been laid in over 10 years

the very steep hills on all areas that enter and exit HW require under road heating as they are that steep
bear in mind that these roads are used from the motorway and are the most heavy used main roads in and out of HW for transport and supply

yet no investment in the road or transport infrastructure
winter tyres may help but they are not going to solve the underlying problem

invest in the road infrastructure because at this time it is collapsing …

ps
the CONservatives have held this area for over 35 years and it shows
they all have good index linked pensions and very well used expenses accounts
but sadly the roads are dismal and in a state of total disrepair …

Well, I've just heard the Chief Examiner for Advanced Driving or something or other saying winter tyres are no use as we don't have such whether for long periods of time and the best advice is not to drive.

That's no solution, and that means that I must have completely dreamed the fact that I drove with rubber winter tyres and they were, and are fine, for temperatures above freezing as well as when it's icy...

Oh and for the "woe is me, I'd have to change my tyres" brigade, so what? I have to get to an airport and pay to get on a plane to fly, but that does give me the ability to fly just as winter tyres give the ability to drive and not end up like the arses I've seen sliding about with less control than drunks.

At any other time of the year if you were on the roads with tyres that had no grip you'd be stopped by the Police.