Petition for legislation for winter and all season tyres

[Justme]

Monthly for 2013-17

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/322658/monthly-average-daily-temperatures-in-the-united-kingdom-uk/

 

 

[Big J]

Here (just outside Edinburgh, but very close to the sea) our average temperature in November was 3.9c and this month it was 2.1c. 

[Stubby]

I would have thought that it is not air temp but road/trac temp the is the factor .  You can have quite a difference between air temp and tarmac temp as I have found in the past racing motorcycles .

[Paul in the woods]

The average will include the night time temp, so if you mainly drive during the day it will be warmer. Plenty of places will be warmer than average as well.

 

Obviously places in the UK will be colder which is why a choice is sensible rather forcing people to do something that is not logical.

 

Perhaps a law could be worded sensibly but I doubt it. I'm also not sure many people would fancy changing their wheels every week depending on the forecast! (It's not forecast to drop down to 7 until next Friday here, even at night).

[Big J]

Paul. Through winter, from November until March you are safest (on balance) on winter tyres for just about the entire UK, possibly excluding the south coast. Everywhere else, the average temperature will be 7c or lower. 

 

For us, we're mild for Scotland and as already mentioned, the temperature was well below 7 (6.8c day/1c night in November and 4.2c and 0c night for December. That's on our weather station, which is positioned 2.5m above the ground). Much of northern England and even the Midlands is colder than us over winter. We are after all only about 1.5 miles from the sea.

 

Get all season tyres or winter tyres and buy them according to where you are in the UK. If in north Scotland or rural northern England, buy winter tyres and have separate summer tyres. If you are in the midlands, get all season. If you are south of the midlands, get all season with a summer bias. Except for those people using separate winter and summer tyres (as many people do in those areas anyway), there is no extra costs and on balance, you will be considerably safer over the course of the year.

[Stubby]

3 minutes ago, Big J said:

Paul. Through winter, from November until March you are safest (on balance) on winter tyres for just about the entire UK, possibly excluding the south coast. Everywhere else, the average temperature will be 7c or lower. 

 

For us, we're mild for Scotland and as already mentioned, the temperature was well below 7 (6.8c day/1c night in November and 4.2c and 0c night for December. That's on our weather station, which is positioned 2.5m above the ground). Much of northern England and even the Midlands is colder than us over winter. We are after all only about 1.5 miles from the sea.

 

Get all season tyres or winter tyres and buy them according to where you are in the UK. If in north Scotland or rural northern England, buy winter tyres and have separate summer tyres. If you are in the midlands, get all season. If you are south of the midlands, get all season with a summer bias. Except for those people using separate winter and summer tyres (as many people do in those areas anyway), there is no extra costs and on balance, you will be considerably safer over the course of the year.

Good summery Big J .

[Paul in the woods]

29 minutes ago, Big J said:

Get all season tyres or winter tyres and buy them according to where you are in the UK. If in north Scotland or rural northern England, buy winter tyres and have separate summer tyres. If you are in the midlands, get all season. If you are south of the midlands, get all season with a summer bias. Except for those people using separate winter and summer tyres (as many people do in those areas anyway), there is no extra costs and on balance, you will be considerably safer over the course of the year.

I've just replaced tyres on one of my cars and chose the best performing tyre I could find (which happen to be summer tyres). If I chose the best all season tyre I would have a tyre that performed less well for most of the time I used it even if I lived somewhere colder.

 

Edited December 31, 2017 by Paul in the woods

[Big J]

7 minutes ago, Paul in the woods said:

I've just replaced tyres on one of my cars and chose the best performing tyre I could find (which happen to be summer tyres). If I chose the best all season tyre I would have a tyre that performed less well for most of the time I used it even if I lived somewhere colder.

 

I disagree. The percentage disadvantage of summer bias all season tyres in high summer is very low (3% or so on braking). They don't perform very much worse than winter tyres in winter conditions. I'd take a minute reduction in summer braking performance if it meant I had massively increased performance on ice, and I was generally safer through winter. Summer tyres are fundamentally unsafe in winter, in the same way that winter tyres are unsafe in summer. 

[Woodworks]

1 hour ago, Justme said:

This link says that since 1910 the yearly ave mean temp is not much more than 7c all year.

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/610134/mean-air-temperature-uk/

That link looks like nonsense at least for around here it is. This is a local weather station at 207 meters asl. In the link set it to yearly mode and click view. You can see the red graph for the year and it's quite clear the temperature is above 7c most of the time https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=IDEVONDO2#history/s20161230/e20171231/myear

Edited December 31, 2017 by Woodworks

[Paul in the woods]

4 minutes ago, Big J said:

I disagree. The percentage disadvantage of summer bias all season tyres in high summer is very low (3% or so on braking). They don't perform very much worse than winter tyres in winter conditions. I'd take a minute reduction in summer braking performance if it meant I had massively increased performance on ice, and I was generally safer through winter. Summer tyres are fundamentally unsafe in winter, in the same way that winter tyres are unsafe in summer. 

There's much more than a 3% braking variance between different makes of summer tyres so I'm not sure about your statement. For my car some of the all season tyres performed better than the worst summer tyres but not as good as the best. I still had the problem the best all season tyre was not available in the correct speed rating.