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France to make winter tyres compulsory from November 2019?

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
is this already decided, or up for discussion?

https://www.largus.fr/actualite-automobile/pneus-hiver-ils-seront-obligatoires-le-1er-novembre-2019-9397399.html?ns_mchannel=Reseaux%20sociaux&ns_source=facebook&ns_campaign=270918%20Pneus%20hiver&ar_mchannel_payant=gratuit&ar_typologie_campagne=article
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 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
The article says proposal which includes the possibility of an option of just having socks or chains on board. Interesting to follow progress as if they go down the tyre route it would add a cost to any drive/ski holiday if had to change all tyres before heading south instead of just chucking the chains in the boot.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Perhaps Goodyear will keep the plant open now Shocked

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/french-workers-bosses-hostage-goodyear-amiens



This will make a massive difference to getting in and out of the resorts.

Just don't tell Alastair wink
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I thought that this was in two parts, a law to allow regions to have different road regulations, then whatever the regions themselves decide.
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RobH2017 wrote:
The article says proposal which includes the possibility of an option of just having socks or chains on board. Interesting to follow progress as if they go down the tyre route it would add a cost to any drive/ski holiday if had to change all tyres before heading south instead of just chucking the chains in the boot.


On the other hand less of a "will it have summer or winter tyres" guessing game for those who hire cars in France.
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Pardon my natural scepticism, but even if they do what will the compliance stats look like?

Last time I was over I wandered round the supermarket car park looking at how many cars had - or rather didn't have - the Crit Air stickers.
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@bar shaker, I rather think I've said too much on the subject already Embarassed .
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Why don’t we do it in the UK? It’s one of the laws I would introduce if I were in govt. most people don’t have a clue what a difference winter tyres make. At the very least I think it should be compulsory for all buses and lorries and commercial vehicles.
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@Perty, while I (sort of agree) the cost - both of tyres* and in particular changing them over would make it prohibitive for the few days they do stuff up the road network.

*Yes, I agree that cost is a zero sum game in that your tyres last twice as long, but the capital outlay for some of the fleets could be ruinous. we used to run ~1100 14 and 18 wheelers. At ~£300+ per tyre, that's a lot of dosh to find in one hit... (£4 to £5m)
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For the UK what would make a difference is a change to the marketing of tyres. At present you go in to buy tyres and are automatically supplied with summer tyres - a simple question, do you want summer tyres, winter tyres, or all season tyres would make people think. (After annual tyre changes for many years I am now a firm convert to the "all seasons" camp)
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Perty wrote:
Why don’t we do it in the UK? It’s one of the laws I would introduce if I were in govt. most people don’t have a clue what a difference winter tyres make. At the very least I think it should be compulsory for all buses and lorries and commercial vehicles.


More importantly I find it surprising and disconcerting that the emergency response services (Police, Fire & Rescue and Ambulance Services) don't all automatically fit winter tyres to their vehicles in winter.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
@Alastair Pink, Hampshire Police fit all their BMW fleet with winter tyres from August onwards.... This follows on from a bad winter a few years ago.
BMW UK are based in Hampshire so I assume Hants Plod get a good deal for their cars Toofy Grin
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Quote:

summer tyres

I hadn't realised there were specific tyres for summer use. I have not been fitting them.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
Come to Germany folks, practically everyone has two sets of tyres, winter and summer. Small garages do a good trade changing them over every April and October. All year round tyres are starting to appear though not sure if that popular as expensive and often have a speed restriction (though given that the limit is normally 180 km/hr probably not an issue for UK drivers....)
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Quote:

Quote:




summer tyres






I hadn't realised there were specific tyres for summer use. I have not been fitting them.



The ones you have been sold are for summer use - utterly useless in snow and ice, and the performance is seriously degraded compared to all season or winter tyres below 7c - a common temperature for all the more wintry months even in the UK.
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 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
boredsurfin wrote:
@Alastair Pink, Hampshire Police fit all their BMW fleet with winter tyres from August onwards.... This follows on from a bad winter a few years ago.
BMW UK are based in Hampshire so I assume Hants Plod get a good deal for their cars Toofy Grin


I know some UK emergency services in some counties do fit winter tyres, that's why my comment was surprise that not all emergency response vehicles are fitted with winter tyres.

It seems that the Midlands Ambulance Service recognised the benefits of winter tyres some years ago, but the message seems to have signally failed to reach Scotland (of all places where you'd have thought there was most need for them! Shocked ), quote
" A Freedom of Information request has revealed that of the 3340-strong police fleet, only 158 have them routinely fitted while 145 have "all year round" tyres. The fire service "does not fit any winter tyres to any vehicles whether car, van or truck" as it believes such a policy would "contravene the manufacturers’ specifications for load speed index on such vehicles". And the Scottish Ambulance Service’s 1451 vehicles are fitted with "cold weather" or "all season" tyres but only once they reach a replacement depth of 3mm. Confused
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@RobinS, I think you may have missed the dripping irony
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
@rob@rar, I thought this had been decided mid last season?
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Perty wrote:
Why don’t we do it in the UK? It’s one of the laws I would introduce if I were in govt. most people don’t have a clue what a difference winter tyres make. At the very least I think it should be compulsory for all buses and lorries and commercial vehicles.


The UK is so behind in Safety Standards..
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under a new name wrote:
@rob@rar, I thought this had been decided mid last season?
I've seen a couple of references to it in recent months, but still don't know what the actual decision is. It won't make much of a difference to me as I've used winter tyres for many years, but useful to offer accurate advice to anyone driving out to use my apartment in Les Arcs.
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Arctic Roll wrote:
@Perty, while I (sort of agree) the cost - both of tyres* and in particular changing them over would make it prohibitive for the few days they do stuff up the road network.


Umm, winter tyres offer better grip, so both better traction and braking than summer ones at temperatures below +7C. Based on the Met. Office numbers for 2017/18 that was almost every day between early Nov. 2017 and early April 2018.
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I used to use all-season tyres with snow symbol in the UK year round. It meant getting to work without problems on the 20+ snow or ice days per year and they seemed pretty good for motorway rain and dry grip too.

Here you buy a car with two sets of wheels and tyres and change them every November and April. Makes perfect sense and I'm really surprised that it's not already the case in France, especially given that many ski area access roads are steep and windy (not such an issue here).
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After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
The legislation ( if enacted) will probably not have a massive impact on locals as most people here use Winter tyres anyway. (Even down in the flatlands of Thonon Les Bains).
While the take up of the Crit-Air stickers has been limited ( and enforcement in these parts non-existent), the 80 KMH speed limit is pretty well observed.
I also noted that the take-up rate for Winter tyres in the UK has risen amongst my friends, as they have realised that the only extra cost is the extra set of rims ( breakers yard / e-bay ) as you just run two sets of tyres contemporaneously rather than sequentially.
And they are happy to offset this cost by the extra grip / security.
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johnE,

Toofy Grin Toofy Grin
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Slightly off topic, but is it worth buying a second set of rims for the winter? We have winter tyres, but they were on the car when we bought it and the summers came without rims. As they'll be swapped in a few weeks' time, it seems the obvious time to add steel rims, but I'm not sure if there's much point?
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The 2 main benefits of the rims are that you can change them over when it suits you, rather than waiting for an appointment at the garage, and that you only pay 1 mounting fee (every 2-3 years) rather than with 1 set of rims where you have to pay mounting fees each spring and autumn, and you do not get a lot of choice over appointment times.
What generally happens here is that the first snow comes in October, everyone panics and books appointments with the garage, sometimes you need to wait 2 weeks, by which time the snow has gone again. With your own rims, its just 30 mins of your time when it suits you.
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@Scarlet, Depending upon age and type of car you may need to add Tyre Pressure Monitoring sensors to the rims to be legally compliant. They aren't cheap upwards of £60 each and then they need to be linked to the cars management system.
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@BergenBergen, Never heard of that, but it sounds like an expense I could do without.

Might just stick with the one set, as we're unlikely to bother swapping them ourselves anyway (there are loads of tyre suppliers and garages around here), and I can use the hole in the middle of the tyre stack to store things Laughing
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
BergenBergen wrote:
@Scarlet, Depending upon age and type of car you may need to add Tyre Pressure Monitoring sensors to the rims to be legally compliant. They aren't cheap upwards of £60 each and then they need to be linked to the cars management system.


Yep a significant drawback to the latest and greatest tech. The more indirect system where it is calculated from ABS response is a lot less problematic and seems to work IME (at least in terms of flagging when I've dropped below 25PSI
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Scarlet wrote:
Slightly off topic, but is it worth buying a second set of rims for the winter? We have winter tyres, but they were on the car when we bought it and the summers came without rims. As they'll be swapped in a few weeks' time, it seems the obvious time to add steel rims, but I'm not sure if there's much point?


Yep, in countries where winter tyres are standard it's common to have a set of alloys dressed an summer rubber and a set of cheap steelies wearing winter coats (and the salt abuse the alloys aren't massive fans of). Of course it's also common for garages/tyre places to offer a wheel storage service, or for people to have garages to store them in in those countries.

If you can it IS worth doing. In the same way winter tyres work better below 7C than summer ones, summer ones work better than winter ones above 7C. Summer tyres are also quieter, one of the main reasons they are the default fitted by car makers.
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Mjit wrote:
......In the same way winter tyres work better below 7C than summer ones, summer ones work better than winter ones above 7C. Summer tyres are also quieter, one of the main reasons they are the default fitted by car makers..

Modern tyre technology has moved on and my tyre supplier (Tyremen in Hull who are excellent) advised me that yes winter tyres definately work best at 7C and colder but quality winter tyres now match summer tyre performance up to 14/15C and it's only when it's warmer than that that the summers come in to their own. I use Continental WinterContact TS850P's from November to April and this matches my own experience plus I can't tell any difference noise wise either.
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@spyderjon, interesting. Kind of makes them appropriate year round in much of the UK then.

My current winter’s are quieter than the summers!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
My winters are quieter than my summers Puzzled
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stanton wrote:
Perty wrote:
Why don’t we do it in the UK? It’s one of the laws I would introduce if I were in govt. most people don’t have a clue what a difference winter tyres make. At the very least I think it should be compulsory for all buses and lorries and commercial vehicles.


The UK is so behind in Safety Standards..


Well the European Safety Council tell us that effect of those Safety Standard makes it almost twice as likely to die in Austrian roads than UK ones...

https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/
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@Philip1972, why the query. They are.
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@under a new name, oh it's just that lots of people have said their winters are noisy, more so than their summers.
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Philip1972, yep, that’s absolutely typical. my last two sets of winters were way noisier.

These ones are significantly quieter and perform much better in the snow and ice, than the last set for sure.

Maybe I have unusually noisy summers.. (they don’t seem noisier than the last ones).
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 After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
After all it is free Go on u know u want to!
I've said this before, 30+ years ago, the default tyre tread was "all season" the tyres I remember fitting to my first cars and the ancient tyres that form the kids horse jumps all had a tread pattern similar to today's winter tyres with lots of small sipes (cuts) in the tread. The demand for low rolling resistance, low noise and "positive" road holding has led to a default tread pattern that is frequently no more than a series of ribs running continuously around the tyre, totally useless on ice & snow.
We now save on fuel consumption but pay to have our tyres changed.
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The reason that winter tyres are not compulsory in the Uk is because govt has taken the decision for us that short term disruption is cheaper and less hassle than longer term infrastructure spending and regulation.

Most people and businesses seem to accept that judging by their lack of preparedness as described above.

It’s frustrating at the time but probably not an unreasonable conclusion for our climate, even in Scotland.
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@tangowaggon, that is a very good point.

I recall driving all round Scotland in sometimes very snowy conditions (we skied quite often) (and with my uni cars being rwd; Triumph Spitfires and a Rover V8 SDI ... ) and never really giving it much thought other than driving appropriately to conditions.
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