Yet another multi-vehicle collision on Whoop Up Drive has rekindled the often polarizing winter driving debate, with many people asking whether winter tires should be mandatory from October to April every year.
“It’s the best way. You’ve always got the right tire,” said Kal Tire manager, Corry Penton. “You’re not making sacrifices to have something that’s ‘good for everything’. You actually have something that’s good for what you’re driving on.”
While many are turning to all-season tires to get through the winter months, those don’t provide the same kind of traction when the temperature drops below minus seven degrees.
“Rubber starts to get hard when it gets cold. What you need when you got grip is a lot of flexibility. You need something with edges that are going to conform to the road and provide some friction and grip.”
An AMA survey conducted last spring saw that nearly 52.8% of Albertans used winter tires, while 43.2% said they did not.
Frequent reasons for not using winter tires provided by the survey group included:
– I have all season tires (27.1%).
– Winter tires are expensive to purchase (23.2%).
– My vehicle has FWD or AWD (15.4%).
– I don’t drive very often so they’re not worth it (7.6%).
– No reason in particular or don’t know (20.8%).
Concerning mandatory winter tires, 57.9% of Albertans said they would not support a law requiring all vehicles in the province to use winter tires from October to April every year.
“From our perspective, we’re not advocating for it because over fifty percent of Albertans are using them already,” said Don Szarko with AMA. “We’re going to monitor that and do this survey every year and see if there’s a progressive increase there.”
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