PSA: Annual get on my soap box and preach about Winter Tires! :)

Public Service Announcement:

Every year I try to help spread the word of how much better life is with winter tires.

"The most common excuses I hear is I don't want to spend the $$ or not worth the hassle."
My response usually contains these points:
-one incident where the tow truck needs to be called out weighs both of those arguments.
-the increased safety margin....better grip in the turns, less likely to slide off the road, better braking distance
-save time....better acceleration....also one can travel faster during adverse weather, as the roads aren't as quite as much of a threat.
-you are saving your normal tires.  Let's assume one gets 40k miles out of a set of tires.  The average person drives 15k a year, so that makes their life span 2.67 years.  So if one simply drives on those tires for 9 months vs. 12; that means those tires will last 3.5 years.  PLUS during the winter one will spin the tires more, thus increasing wear.

All season tires are like a swiss army knife.  Yes they can a lot but they generally suck at it.  Yes you can open a wine bottle, gut a fish, install/remove screws, but a device dedicate for the given task will out perform the multinational tool.

Consumer Reports on the subject of Winter vs All Season tires