" you make it sound if you don’t have snow tires then you’re stranded at the side of the road" " I certainly don’t see saying it. @MikeInNh I was just responding to the statments that “all season tires have excellent snow traction”. They may when compared to other all season tires in light conditions but they really don’t have excellent absolute winter traction. ONLY, with no exception I am aware of, winter tires or all terrain tires have this capability on tires we normal buy for cars and trucks for road use.
The best all season tires may have passable traction that gets a prudent driver through…especially if you have all wheel and four wheel drive like you do and watch your speed to make up for less braking and cornering. The fact is… . All wheel drive car or 4 wd trucks can accelerate in snow with all season tires better then fwd cars with snow tires.
As you indicated …Everyone should drive slower in snow regardless of the tires. But one thing is for sure, with snow tires, my wife with her AWD car will go and stop and corner much better then the same car with all seasons…especially n 6 inches of snow by a wide margin.
None that I know of are “excellent or even very good” which is the term that some have used for all season tires with no qualification. I could not use “excellent” even when comparing them to other all season tires. If they were good to excellent as snow tires compared to other all season tires, , they would have the SNOW FLAKE emblem, an accepted indicator of very good to excellent winter performance in snow and on ice, compared to all season tires in general.
All seasons with out this emblem, are not. To call an all season tire without this emblem an “excellent” or even a good winter tire is to call the best looking pig in the sty, good looking. No offense to pigs. I will just call them what they are…a slightly better looking pig.
None of them can be good for very long, even if they are good initially. That would make them poor long term. All season tires are bought with a tread depth several 32 nd inch less then winter tires and winter tires should be changed when they reach less then 5/32. That’s often sooner then half the tread wear of many all season tires to begin with tread that is deficient in design both with harder rubber and smaller tread blocks.
Now, throw in LRR, and you have another factor to deal with. How many LRR with snow flake emblems can you find ? Only within the category of winter tires does it apply.