it's a perceived must. when running "all season" tires year round the AWD inspires more confidence, and most people don't even know winter tires are a thing. Plus 4x4 only helps you start moving, but once you are, every car still only has 2 wheels to turn and 4 to stop, which are quite possibly more crucial in snow....
4x4/AWD makes slides in snow/slush more controllable as you spin around the center of the vehicle and have two extra drive wheels to regain traction with.
Couple years ago I was driving through Arizona during a massive blizzard. Everyone's doing 15, and I'm doing 50 - taking things slow and careful because of the traffic.
I had people in vests standing out in the road waving at me trying to get me to slow down! And I'm going "What in the hell are you doing out in the road!? Don't you know this is a blizzard!"
I would rather drive my rear wheel drive Camaro with its snow tires in a snowstorm than my the pickups I've borrowed over the years with their all season tires. It's quite the thing to remember that you need to drive like an old lady suddenly, even though you're in a big bad 4x4 pickup.
Surely that has nothing to do with the weight distribution and handling characteristics that result in the pickup and sports car having different ability to create traction out of whatever friction coeficient is available. /s
Snow tires don't really stand on their own merit unless you're constantly encountering the conditions the snow tire people use in the commercials to magnify the difference. The biggest reason to get snow tires is simply that then you can run a "pure" summer tire rather than an all season the rest of the year. The second biggest reason is dry road performance.
> AWD inspires more confidence
Stop and work backwards and ask yourself why that is rather than doing the Principal Skinner "no everyone else is wrong" routine. In practice, all seasons on an AWD car result in less slipping around than snow tires on a FWD car. Heck, if the difference where anywhere near close everyone rich enough to have a new car would probably have snow tires because the dealership or tire shop would be able to make that sale. The reason they can't is because in people's experience they're just not necessary.
Stupid internet circle jerks about stopping distance are not the pain point or performance bottleneck for the average user. The degree to which you can enter/exit a side street that has snow plowed in front of it, navigate a steep and poorly plowed driveway, park in an unplowed space, cross the slush between lanes on a main roads or highway, those are what "real users" care about and they're where AWD shines.
>but once you are, every car still only has 2 wheels to turn and 4 to stop, which are quite possibly more crucial in snow..
These trope needs to be taken out back and shot. Regardless of your tire type the amount of traction available in snow conditions is such that "not being stupid enough to come into a situation too hot" is the dominant factor in overall outcome in braking/turning situations. Snow tires are an incremental improvement, not a categorical one. And the difference between a wet road and a snowy one is very much a categorical one.
AWD is the right choice for the statistical average person or "casual user" who's snow experience is dominated by somewhat plowed, somewhat churned snow/slush roads and is already driving incredibly conservatively. If you're driving on a frozen lake all the time like in the tire commercials or live somewhere rural and drive on a ton of fresh snow, by all means get the snow tires. But most people aren't, in that category they're better served by some random crossover and not thinking about it. And if you are one of those people, then spend a little more and get something with studs for all the ice you're inevitably also encountering.
> Stupid internet circle jerks about stopping distance are not the pain point or performance bottleneck for the average user.
Uh, it should be? The ability to confidently stop is far more important than to go. If you can’t get going, you’re not in a wreck. If you can’t stop, well…
You also missed another key reason to get snow tires: many (most?) vehicles do not come with AWD even as an option. Telling someone to trade their Civic in for a CR-V just so they can get AWD isn’t sensible, when they could mount snow tires and get a significant traction boost.
>Uh, it should be? The ability to confidently stop is far more important than to go
First off, this is the principal skinner "everyone else is wrong" take.
Second, it's just not how things work in practice. In practice what happens if you have a FWD car that can't "just go" you wind up driving way harder to make up for it. Stuff like hitting hills at speed and trying to take on-ramps at the limit of traction because you are having to work around the limitation of being unable to actually put power to the ground when you need to. Say nothing of all the sketchy situations that happen at the margin of that (backing down a hill you couldn't go up, getting stuck less than graceful merges, etc).
>You also missed another key reason to get snow tires: many (most?) vehicles do not come with AWD even as an option
I don't think that's anywhere near true for the US market.
There was an anecdote that went something like "a 4x4 will just get you stuck worse then a 2wd" =)
And, like you said, people think that an AWD car will stop faster. No, it'll just start moving faster, more traction doesn't make the brakes better or the road any less slippery.
I owned a single 4WD car and it was super fun in the winter, but... when it's icy, you're most likely moving faster than you would be with a 2wd, which again results in some heart palpitations when you're trying to stay on the road =)
I remembering driving in a near-blizzard in Connecticut one night (got caught out in it; this wasn’t on purpose), and feeling like this explanation was the only one that made sense. I had a Pontiac G6 at the time, which was a fairly boring FWD sedan. Having learned to drive in Nebraska, I was decent at driving in snow, so I tootled along at about 25 MPH. I was being passed by SUVs and trucks, and then felt vindicated from seeing many of them off the road a few miles later.
I would’ve stopped to help, but I was concerned that if I lost momentum, I wouldn’t get going again.
Yeah..h as someone in Upstate New York, one of the snowiest places in the country. Snow tires are really what you want. AWD is really nice. BUT end of the day, if you can only go 30 you can only go 30. What really saves you with AWD is when you are dealing with tracks through the snow, AWD makes that a lot easier without spinning out.
> who exist only in the minds of people seeking to validate a purchasing decision.
Don't forget the people who just want to sneer at other people in ill-considered condescension! Plenty of that from the "the world outside the Bay Area and NYC isn't real and none of those people exist" folks.
It could be that. It could be AI farming. Ask questions you want AI to be able to answer, get a bunch of reasonable comments for the models to gobble up. Next time you ask google, gemeni might even post links to this very post!
I'd say it's 50/50 if it's for AI or astroturfing.
Even still, I suspect tractor deaths and injuries are far far higher per driver than for cars. Tractors are very capable, but it's also very very easy to get in a dangerous situation with them.
Very incorrect, the US constitution states "[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures"
Congress, not the executive. And the supreme court has ruled that power to be exclusive
>> Something terrible happens to men as they grow up
lol... testosterone? or perhaps testosterone combined with thousands of years of "wolf pack" evolution where one has to prod and disrupt to find "their place" in the pecking order?
Imagine a neutral starting point where maybe it was not without male agression, but no actual millennia yet spent further honing animalistic tendencies along the wolf pack model.
The dog-eat-dog approach appears to have evolved including the same major hormone balance among various species such as canines and humans, you could say it is like aggression and pecking order "on steroids".
But the steroids were always there, it's more like the steroids are being leveraged by the craftiness of the species in an evolutionary biological way.
Resulting in the humans ending up much more evolved when they want to be.
Anyway, from that neutral root a completely different offshoot could independently have spent the same millennia evolving in the complete opposite direction, away from as much resemblance to a canine hierarchy as evolution would allow.
Such disparate cultures may or may not have interacted, clashed or have their decendants coexist today. Nobody would ever know after all this time but among men, maybe some will culturally trend more toward the influence of testosterone in a competitive way when encountering others regardless of whether they are males or females. The male-male competition the most prominent.
While others will be just the opposite and be highly influenced in a co-operative way when encountering others whether male or female. The male-female co-operation the most prominent.
IOW for some men their testosterone is primarily involved in relating to other males without as much consideration for females, other men their testosterone is primarily involved in relating to females without as much consideration for other males. And everything in between.
If any one culture were to become dominant enough, that would make any other one an outlier.
Social and ethnic differences seemed to soften the male response, and such a softening was also noted when unicycling in Framlingham, a small Suffolk town to which I had moved from Newcastle.
responses varied between a large hard industrial northern England city and a softer more rural and idyllic town.
I saw a comedy video recently in which the comic suggested that a man using an umbrella in Newcastle was enough to provoke comedic insults from passers by.
For many men, this type of comment is frequently made without any malice. (The original archetype several levels up was "Run Forrest, run!")
This seems like it fits into the general tone of a large fraction of interactions I've had with other men. Either I missed a lot of intended aggression, or this large volume of interactions wasn't actually intended to be aggressive. Of course, it's possible for a short verbal communication to be understood differently than it was intended. But in this post, we are getting the recipient's interpretation of the intent. It appears to me, (also a biased source) that this recipient is very sensitive to perceived aggression and insults. There's some analysis and speculation based on their perceptions, that seems to take it as given that intents were correctly understood. From my reading, this is very much in question. I didn't have the benefit of hearing tone of voice and understanding full context. But in their written form most of the lines categorized here as aggressive would have been categorized differently by some other unicycle rider. Specifically, I'm thinking of me. Full disclosure, I don't know how to unicycle.
yeah buts its not even cheap like aliexpress. its overpriced mushroom brands!! there are no deals that I see on Amazon anymore, or at least maybe they know im more likely to pony up the extra $$, so thats what they show me…
