Perhaps you have just set a new trend for winter soled shoes , though I suspect that you will have to change them more than twice a year !

Hmm, this is something that's been bothering me. Where do you get footwear that works well on icy pavements?

A few years ago I was working in southern Sweden and was very ****ed off that the locals could walk faster than me without falling over. Sometimes I almost had to shuffle, and they just strode past. I'm sure that my shoes and walking boots from the UK were the problem, but since they didn't need replacing I neglected to enquire at a local shoe shop.

So bearing in mind cold/dry is rare in a UK winter, you're looking at being better off on winters.

The last week is the first complete week this winter where temperatures where I live have been constantly below 7C. The roads have been dry as a bone the whole time.

I'm not sure cold dry conditions are as rare as you say.

Well so much for my winter tyres..

They're sitting in the garage as I cannot physically undo the wheel bolts, they're done up so tight that I can't even get them off with a torque wrench & with snow looming for tomorrow I guess I'm going to be completely screwed.

I've been driving 30+ years without sliding into anybody.

99% of drivers do not have winter tyres (in SE at least). So 99% have to leave the car at home so the 1% with winter tyres can drive 5mph faster? Thats never going to happen.

If your tyres lose grip on ice or snow, you are driving too fast for the conditions. Its your fault, not the ice's fault. This is stated in the highway code, which gives advice about driving in such conditions.

I have to disagree completely with what you say unfortunately. As has been stated by several others, most standard tyres are now more 'summer only' than true all seasons, especially so with tyres like the Michelin PS2 that I generally run which don't even like wet grass if they're cold. They are fine in standing water, and once hot through, not bad when it gets cold either thanks to a decent silica content. But, and it's a huge but, that changes massively up here when winter sets in properly. I frequently drive ungritted B & C roads, some barely more than farm lanes and there are frequently large patches of black ice, verglas and patches of uncleared snow etc running in from the edges. The PS2's are useless in this, utterly, bordering on terrifyingly useless, especially when last winter it was regularly below -10c and the majority of my driving was well after dark. Which was when I swapped to winter tyres (I've used them regularly in the past too, I'd just killed the old ones the previous winter and mis-timed replacing them). The difference? Instead of needing to take the gritted A roads with their huge number of totally irresponsible and inept drivers, I was able to drive over the hill roads to where I wanted to go in safety, as a result of improved control on my part and fewer idiots coming towards me out of control. In the snow they're invaluable, in fact, I'd go as far as to say that the vRS with Conti TS830's was better than most pseudo 4x4's around. Control on unexpected ice is hugely improved with a far more progressive breakaway and reactions to both braking and steering input.

I've done plenty of things the same way for years, that doesn't mean it's right. There's a time and a place for winter tyres and in my case, in the conditions I regularly drive in, they're well worth the additional outlay as it gives me significantly greater freedom in bad conditions when I'm heading out into the rural areas (I drive somewhere between 30-40k on average each year between the car and van). Do you need them if you drive 5k a year around town? Probably not.

I've got my Nokians on now, just in time for the snow.

It cost me £25 to get them swapped over & the tyre place said they'd been put on with the wrong torque setting!

I have noticed one thing that they're very quiet and it will be interesting to see what the benefits are on my car compared to last winter with ordinary tyres on.

Coming homefrom york to saltburn this afternoon and the snow was quite bad,but i was very impressed with the avon ice touring tyres i have had on since october,no sliding,no wheelspin hardly and car felt very firm footed,never had winter tyres before but can not recommend them highly enough compared to ordinrary tyres last year when i could not go anywhere.

There is a good argument for leaving winter tyres on all year round!!

There is a good argument for leaving winter tyres on all year round!!

I'm not convinced by that, certainly if your normal summer tyres are performance oriented. I find that the winter tyres certainly detract from the driving experience as their sidewalls are significantly thinner to aid grip at low temperatures and prevent flat spots occurring when left parked in the cold. This also means that they are more easily damaged by holes in the road, an issue for me on the backroads I tend to drive on regularly. It's not a problem but you do need to be more aware of this if you're used to using the full width of the road, either in corners or to avoid oncoming traffic that seems incapable of approximating the width of their own vehicle.

Also, they aren't nearly as good as the temperature reaches 10C, and are very noticeably poorer compared to proper performance tyres above that. For me it's a no brainer as the performance advantages of true winter tyres (well, all season's this year in my case) and performance summer tyres are most prevalant in their intended seasons. October-March it's winter/AS, the rest of the time, or whenever the winter tyres run out, it's the summer tyres that go on.

I'm not convinced by that

Continental make the recommendation that if the choice is between a set of summer or a set of winter tyres then the safest choice is winters, all year round.

Their reasoning is, no doubt, that drivers can cope with a lack of grip in warmer temperatures, when the grip levels are merely adequate instead of great, but cannot cope with a lack of grip in cold wintery conditions.

Perhaps this advice makes more sense to people who live in Scotland than it does to those who live in Devon.

If Continental also made winter biased all season tyres I expect their advice would be more nuanced.