When the first snow of the season fell Sunday, the kids joyfully jumped into their ski pants and boots and headed outside. They were so happy to play in the snow, they shovelled both the driveway and the deck, without prompting.
So while they changed their traction attire, e.g. runners for boots, I had been doing a lot of thinking about changing the traction attire on my Buick Rainier SUV.
My tires were nearly bald, after three and a half years and 84,000 km. With an all-terrain tread pattern, they performed decently for the first few years, but last winter, they could have cost me my life.
On four occasions the SUV nearly ended up on its roof. One day in January I was on an overpass on the far side of Winnipeg when I lost control and nearly flipped. An hour later, on the other side of Winnipeg, the same thing happened again.
The last storm in April deposited over an inch of white ice on Highways 6 and 39 from Regina to Estevan. Again, the truck veered into the opposite lane. I stayed overnight in Weyburn in hopes of improved conditions the next day, only to end up backwards in the opposite ditch while doing 50 km/h.
In each circumstance, the vehicle suddenly veered to the left on icy roads. I suspect the all wheel drive kicked in due to the lack of traction, and pulled me over.
This winter would be different. I would be getting studded winter tires.
My uncle used to own a tire shop. He once explained to me there is a huge difference between winter tires and all-season. When you have no money for an additional set of tires, it's easy to dismiss such wisdom. But this fall, the thought kept rumbling through my head, "What is my life worth?"
If my kids shouldn't be playing in the snow in their summer shoes, should my SUV?
It turns out the selection of winter tires for a mid-sized SUV is limited. When oil hit $147 a barrel in 2008, no one wanted SUVs anymore. I did, and got mine for cheap that very week. Sales fell so far, GM shut down its plant that made the Chev Trailblazer, GMC Envoy and Buick Rainier. HBO even made a documentary about it called The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. The result, two years after the closing of that plant, is that tire makers have less incentive to make tires of that size. Mid-sized SUVs are now seen as dinosaurs, and apparently, so are their tires.
I was able to track down a set of winter tires from one of the large chains while I was in Regina the other day. Knowing snow was coming, I grabbed them quickly before they were sold out. They are being mounted here in Estevan as I write this.
The radio this morning said the RCMP reported 80 accidents since the snow flew this past weekend. Eighty! I wonder how many of those could have been prevented if everyone had proper winter tires?
Some jurisdictions, like Quebec, now require winter tires for everyone. That's actually not a bad idea.
It hurt financially to buy a set of winter tires for my SUV, and we should probably get a set for my wife's 4x4 pickup as well. It has done a lot better on winter roads than mine has. There is definitely a difference between 4x4 and all-wheel-drive, winter tires or no winter tires. A 4x4 is far superior.
While winter tires may hurt the pocketbook, hopefully in the end they save you from a more serious kind of hurt, one with blood involved.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
