When it comes to your car, the tires you choose can change everything. They affect how well your vehicle performs in different weather and on different road surfaces.
Tires are the most important parts of your car. If you don’t have tires in good condition, you have no control over the road. Even the best-built cars fail without good traction to their wheels.
You could be driving down a beautiful stretch of pavement when suddenly an obstruction appears. With pick-up trucks and SUVs constantly creeping into your lane, travel on poorly maintained roads is more dangerous than ever.
Different styles of tires are required for various conditions that drivers commonly face today. It’s worth studying some basic tire types and how they can improve and have a safe trip on your next journey.
Check out this list of tires and how they work (or don’t).
What You Need: Snow Tires
Tires With low tread depth or poor grip make turning difficult and increase stopping distance.
Mud and snow tires are designed to help give vehicles traction when there is snow or mud on the ground. Their design allows for much more surface area than regular street tires, which increases the amount of rubber that contacts the road in wet or slippery conditions.
That means better traction and control and means that these tire types aren’t meant for anything but these conditions. If you try to drive on them in the summer, your car’s traction and stopping distance will be substantially worse.
What You Need: Intermediate Tires
Tires with many tread depths provide better control on wet roads but have a shorter life expectancy.
These types of tires do well on both wet and dry pavement. Although they aren’t as good at gripping the road as snow or all-season tires, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it means that these tires won’t necessarily stop you suddenly when there is water on the ground like snow or mud tires would do.
What You Need: All-Season Tires
All-season tires perform well in many weather situations and sit somewhere between snow tires and intermediate tires.
If you live in an area that has relatively mild winters, then all-season tires are a good choice for you because they combine the best features of snow and intermediate tires. They have deep treads to provide grip on wet roads but have rounded edges so that they don’t catch as much wind while driving at high speeds like snow tires do.
What You Need: Performance/Off-Road Tires
Tires with large tread depths provide excellent control when water is on the road and last longer than other tire types.
This type of tire has tall, deep treads, making it ideal for driving on a wet road. The design is also suitable for off-road driving, so if your car spends a lot of time on gravel, dirt roads, or through mud, this type of tire would be best.
What You Need: Winter Tires
These tires have deep treads that allow them to perform well in many different weather conditions and last for a long time compared to other tires.
When you’re driving at high speeds, these tire types maintain grip with the road better than any other type of tire because their design minimizes the contact between the rubber and air around it. Because they do not need as much contact with water or snow as performance or all-season tires do, they are the tire of choice for people who live in areas with harsher winters or just travel through these types of weather.
What You Need: Summer Performance Tires
The best performance tires have a unique design that creates more surface area, giving them better traction when accelerating, braking, and cornering.
Performance summer tires are designed only to be used during the summer because their lack of tread depth makes them slippery when it’s wet out. If you would like to use your car year-round, performance winter tires are best since they are made especially for cold, snowy conditions.
The Most Common Driving Situations
Driving In The Snow
Snow requires a different kind of tire than what you would usually use on dry roads or even rain-covered roads. That is because snow tends to give way easily, resulting in less traction and grip for your wheels and tires – something that regular all-season tires cannot handle very well. You will need winter or snow tires to both improve vehicle stability and provide better traction in snow.
Driving On A Track
Driving on a race track can be extremely fun and exciting, but it also requires a different kind of tire than what you would need for regular roads or snow-covered ones. During high-speed driving on tracks with high banking and acute angles, the centrifugal force pushes the car outwards, making your wheels lose contact with the track if only normal tires are used.
Driving In The Mud And Dirt
To drive in conditions like these, you will need a special kind of tires and some traction devices such as mud/all-terrain tires or an all-wheel-drive system.
Driving On Sand Dunes Or Beaches
Driving on sand dunes or beaches is not difficult because the ground is hard and relatively smooth, but it requires a tire tread that has been specifically designed for such surfaces. That is because the tire must be able to keep a lot of sand or small pebbles out from under it, which would cause you to lose traction very quickly.
Summary
So there you have it – situations where different kinds of tires are needed.
It’s important to keep in mind that you will also need different types of wheels depending upon what kind of tire you wish to use. There are hundreds of wheel styles available from manufacturers worldwide, so choose the design that suits your car best!
With this amount of information, you can choose the right tires for you and your driving needs! Good luck shopping around, have fun, and stay safe on the road!
