Snow Tires Or All-Season Radials For Winter Driving?

My father was a big believer in snow tires, and living in the Utica-Rome area all my life, I am too. Every year at about this time, I make sure that I have my four snow tires installed on my car. But, you do hear many people say they have all-season radials, and that's good enough. Here are more thoughts on the subject.

According to an article entitled:

"What You Need to Know About Winter Tires", by Sean Phillips on About.com:

"Snow Tires or All-Seasons? Many tire people will tell you that all-season tires are useless. This is not entirely true; it's just that 95% of tires called “all-season” are really made for cold, rainy weather and are useless in ice or snow. All-season tires can be useful mainly in areas that see very light winters, but very few all-season tires are at all suitable for real winter weather. Those that do perform well in winter are now generally called “all-weather” in order to distinguish them from less capable tires. For real winter driving, a set of snow tires are always best.

There are three major considerations to keep in mind when contemplating whether to put only two snow tires on your car:

1) Don't do it.

2) No, really; don't do it.

3) For God's sake, don't do it.

Putting on only two snow tires is very probably worse than not putting on snow tires. Having each axle grip differently is a recipe for disaster on snow. While only two snow tires might save you a little money in the short term, it's very likely to cost much more than that in the long term."