OCR Text |
Show Study Shows Benefits For Tire Traction on Ice Notwithstanding their other oth-er benefits, radial tires offer no advantage for driving on ice, according to Fred Montmorency, Mont-morency, President of the Utah Safety Council. Citing a report by the National Safety Council's Committee on Winter Driving Driv-ing Hazards, the safety official of-ficial said that this group's tests indicated that there is little choice between conventional, conven-tional, bias-belted and radial rad-ial tires as far as performance perform-ance on ice is concerned. "Bias belted tires may provide pro-vide slightly better stopping ability, while radial tires provide slightly poorer than average stopping capacity," Montmorency reported. "Insofar as cornering capacity ca-pacity or traction performance perform-ance on ice is concerned, here again these tests indicate indi-cate no significant differences differen-ces between the three types." In other phases of the Council's annual winter driving dri-ving test program, various types of snow tires, studded tires and tire chains have been compared for performance perform-ance on both snow and ice. These findings show that conventional snow tires are of little or no help in stopping stop-ping on glare ice, although they do offer a substantial improvement in pulling ability abil-ity in loosely packed snow. Studded snow tires, on the other hand, improve both stopping and pulling ability on glare ice. And when used on all four wheels they increase in-crease cornering speeds by about 25 percent. For the ultimate in winter win-ter traction, reinforced tire chains far out-perform other oth-er traction aids. "These tests show that tire chains provide from four to seven times the pulling ability of regular tires on snow and ice, and cut stopping distance dis-tance in half," Montmorency reported. "So even though you use snow tires or studs, take the chains along for severe snow or ice conditions." condi-tions." "Most importantly," he concluded, "these tests have pointed up the fact that even ev-en with the help of these devices, performance on snow and ice is nowhere near the usual dry pavement performances. Driving speed on slippery pavements must be sharply reduced to compensate com-pensate for the loss of traction." |