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It’s That Time of Year Again

12.19.16 - How to Drive On Snow

Every time you hear that statement you might start to think about the calendar and what this might mean. Is there a special holiday coming up, do you need to prepare your house for guests or get ready for a vacation? What’s happening that you need to get ready for? It’s a specific time of year, but what time of year is it and what does this statement refer to? It seems like you would have thought ahead to the activities that are taking place so that you’d be ready, but now the thoughts are swirling around in your head as to what you need to do to be ready.

The time I’m referring to is “Snow Tire Season.” Yes we have the holidays to give us the cheer we want and fill us with the good feelings that make us happy to be together during the season of giving, but make sure you aren’t giving your friends and neighbors a friendly bump in the rear with your car by putting snow tires on your vehicle. These tires are an important part of making sure you’ll be able to control your vehicle during the snowy months of the year.

Ice is nearly impossible to control your vehicle on and driving too fast on either snow or ice is certainly a recipe for disaster. In order to be prepared for the most accident prone time of year you need to put the snow tires on your vehicle and make sure you even have chains ready in case you need them. Without the tires and chains that are made for the snow you’ll end up like the vehicles in this video on Twitter by @B911Nature which was captured on December 5th. You can see how important it was for these vehicles to have the right tires and be ready for the weather before it approached.

In the video you see two buses going down a hill out of control that end up crashing into a pile of cars that are in the intersection. Then a work truck gets in on the action and another bus. Finally you see a police car that can’t seem to keep its grip end up at the bottom of the slope as well. It doesn’t’ appear that anyone is hurt during this pile up, thankfully, but there could be several thousand dollars-worth of property damage.

If you happen to have a winter-ready vehicle like the Mazda CX-5 crossover SUV with I-ACTIV AWD, it’s time to get it out and start driving, especially if you live in the northern part of the US. You’ll want to be completely prepared because these winter storms can pop up at any time and your summer rubber won’t be any match for the lack of grip that snow and ice cause. Get out the Snow Tires, it’s Snow Tire Season and then you can help avoid the costly challenges of additional issues with the driving of your vehicle into a pile of other cars that weren’t ready for the weather changes.