It's been repeated many times here that winter tyres out-perform summer tyres below 7C on good road surfaces due to the softer rubber. Some have been less than convinced by this rather vague claim, wanting more specific details of compartitive braking distances at different temperatures. So I was interested to see the recent What Car? test of winter tyres vs summer tyres.
Specifically the bit that said when they measured dry stopping distance from 62 mph at 5.5C (NB - below 7C ), the winter tyres took an average of 19 feet more to come to a halt ...
In fact even the worst summer tyre (Nankang) outperformed ALL the winter tyres:
Specifically the bit that said when they measured dry stopping distance from 62 mph at 5.5C (NB - below 7C ), the winter tyres took an average of 19 feet more to come to a halt ...
In fact even the worst summer tyre (Nankang) outperformed ALL the winter tyres: