Who here has (had) winter tires?

[02 Park Ave]

What is the current thinking concerning how many winter tyres should be mounted on your motorcar?  In the past, I had them on the drive wheels only.  Would that practice be found to be acceptable today?

[corco]

What is the current thinking concerning how many winter tyres should be mounted on your motorcar?  In the past, I had them on the drive wheels only.  Would that practice be found to be acceptable today?

I know people who do that, but I just assume use  four for the added traction. Also easier to control tire wear if you're not juggling half  sets of tires. I'd say four is better than two, bit two is way better than none.

[froggie]

For an AWD, you of course need them on all four wheels.

[cpzilliacus]

I roll with Michelin mud-and-snow tires on the truck year 'round.

Acceptable if I need to go off-road (as I do sometimes), they ride smooth even at high speeds and are relatively good in terms of fuel consumption.

How many miles do you typically get out of a set?

Between 65,000 and 80,000 miles on this truck (which has over 360,000 total miles on the meter now).

[Dr Frankenstein]

What is the current thinking concerning how many winter tyres should be mounted on your motorcar?  In the past, I had them on the drive wheels only.  Would that practice be found to be acceptable today?

As many as the vehicles has wheels, for equal wear and better braking.

[roadman]

The only car I ever drove that had winter tires (rear axle only) was my parents' 1975 Buick Century wagon.  Drove the car regularly for about eight years when living with my parents, and it was willed to me when my father died in 1987.  The winter tires, already mounted on rims, came with the car when my father bought it in 1979.  And yes, it was my job to change the rear tires to the winters in late fall, and change then back to the regular tires in early spring.

Since late 1987, when I traded the wagon in towards my 1984 Tempo, which I named Son of Buick partially in honor of what was a generally reliable and dependable car (despite its lousy MPG), I have never purchased winter tires for any of my cars.  In the 28 years since I bought the Tempo, I have had exactly one instance (knocks wood) where I considered getting winter tires, and that was about a month ago after an incident where my 2012 Focus was severely slipping during one of the more severe winter storms.  However, it now appears to me that getting a much better set of all season tires instead (still running on factory tires) should be sufficient to cover the possibility of such conditions in the future.

[02 Park Ave]

My Michelin HydroEdge tyres did a great job in the last snowstorm here.

[Duke87]

I honestly was in high school before I even became aware that snow tires existed. I do not own any and have never driven a vehicle with them unless one of my rentals had them (I wouldn't think to check).

Of course, I live and grew up in a place that gets snow but does not stay below freezing all winter. In a normal year, anyway.

The normal average temperature in February for New York City is 35 degrees. Typically, after it snows, it warms up and then melts. In a normal winter the ground is bare the majority of the time. The past couple years of wavy jet stream and polar vortex drama have upset this balance, though - the average temperature for February 2015 was only 24 degrees and the past couple years we've been dealing with something we don't usually deal with: snow accumulating over the course of the season faster than it can melt.

But our roads are still getting maintained to bare pavement status in spite of this, so snow tires are not warranted and really don't make sense since while they perform better in snow, they are inferior to regular tires on bare pavement.

[1995hoo]

Heh, that's funny about not knowing they existed until you were in high school. I was the other way around–back in the 1970s, my father used to get "snow tires" (as they were then called) put on my parents' one car every year. They replaced that car in 1979 and he never used winter tires again, so by the time I was in high school I had more or less forgotten they existed.

[PHLBOS]

I first learned of snow tires when I was about 7 or 8 (circa early 70s) when I was helping my brother and father change them on the family cars.

As previously mentioned, I was using snow tires until just a few years ago.

I kind of missed the old hum those tires would make while riding on pavement at highway speeds.

What is the current thinking concerning how many winter tyres should be mounted on your motorcar?  In the past, I had them on the drive wheels only.  Would that practice be found to be acceptable today?

As many as the vehicles has wheels, for equal wear and better braking.

I have to disagree here.  For AWD or 4WD vehicles; yes, one would need snow tires for all the wheels.  For 2WD vehicles (be it RWD or FWD, most cars fall in this category), snow tires for only the drive wheels won't be a major issue in terms of wear & braking (one's not supposed to be doing 50-70 mph during a blizzard anyway); largely because snow tires are not (legally) supposed normally intended to be on vehicles year-round in most areas.

Note: when it came time to take the snow tires off, my brother & I would combine such with a full-blown tire rotation as a means of evenly distributing tire wear.

Once upon a time, older versions of Rand McNally Road Atlases used to have a one-page table that listed the periods that snow tires (& even studded snow tires) were allowed to be worn per each state/province.  Sadly, newer versions no longer carry that handy-dandy cheat-sheet.

[roadman]

@PHLBOS - I believe the state laws Rand McNally referenced in their cheat sheets applied to studded tires only.  Never heard of a state restricting the use of non-studded snow tires.