A free driving lesson to my wonderful neighbors

[Xanathos]

/ho

Originally Posted by newguy416

Thanks for the advice. It's too bad a set of good snow tires are so expensive.

For those of you that have them, do you normally put them on and take them off a certain time of year? For example: October - March

Is it safe to drive on snow tires when there is no snow/ice?

I would have to cart them to a tire shop to have them switch out my tires for me.

Last year here, I didn't see one snowflake.

Well the tires I use (Blizzaks) are allowed on the car year round, and they're fine under any condition. The one caveat to this is that these types of tires use an extremely soft type of rubber, which is why they grip snow and ice so superbly. If you leave them on during warm/hot weather conditions, the rubber just basically melts off the tires, severely shortening their lifespan. And since a set of Blizzaks can run you almost $800, that's pretty wasteful. If you put them on and take them off at appropriate times of year, you can usually get 4 years out of them.

I put mine on a set of rims I bought on eBay, and just switch them over myself during the first winter event of each season. It only takes about 30 minutes, and saves 60 some odd dollars and a long wait in a tire shop.

[Joe Doer]

Originally Posted by AlohaHuey

Snow tires must be removed by a certain date, which is April 1st, if memory serves.

Studded tires are only legal Nov. 1 - Mar. 31. Motorists using studded tires after the deadline could incur a fine from the Washington State Patrol.

[kanhawk]

More examples of how not to drive. This from a couple of years ago in Seattle, but similar conditions to our most recent storm:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeOaN...layer_embedded

[vandygirl]

Originally Posted by Xanathos

While it is indeed sound strategy to drive with care on the shroud and thus slow down, when going uphill, you should try to avoid hitting the base of a 35 degree incline hill doing only 11 miles per hour. When going UPhill, you actually want to go faster than normal. This is so when you get halfway up and hit a bit of ice and start to lose momentum, you've already got some steam built up to power you over the rest of the way. You will note that when I went around you and went up the hill after your 2nd failed attempt, I hit the base of the hill doing somewhere between 35 and 40. I hit the same patch of ice midway that you did, but I had enough momentum to push me past it. Don't worry about sliding "upwards" on a hill. It's quite easy to stop forward progress on an incline.

That explains why people were zipping up the hill around me like they were on the autobahn. I was driving about 25 and I felt like I was going fast after driving less than 5 mph on an extremely icy street. I later realized that I had a few things in my favor that were within my control: 1) I drove extremely slowly on side streets, 2) with my foot ever ready to tap the brake lightly when I started to slide, 3) with the car in 1st gear, 4) on relatively new tires, 5) and not driving too slowly going uphill.