Winter Tyres - Watch This - Buy Some!

I seriously have no idea, as a professional driver, why anyone would even consider driving to the Alps without winter tyres fitted to their car.
Its a different scenario in the UK as much of our winter temperatures are above 7c where winter tyres simply wear out and get warm. But there are enough times when we have conditions like we did at the weekend when having them would be so useful.
Maybe insurers should consider penalising in claimants if they run into another car/go into a ditch/etc if they haven't got winter tyres on during icy/snowy conditions in this country, by not paying out the full amount?

I drove my Sharan, with m+s tyres on, from Vaujany to Lyon on Saturday afternoon. Lots of snow had been forecast for Saturday all week, so everyone knew it was coming. We skied until 2pm, the snow had been falling heavily all morning and it was very windy too.
I had put my snow chains on before leaving the covered parking and then parked by the Vaujany lift ready to go later on. It's about 3 or 4 miles down to Allemond, took us about half an hour to drive down on a snow covered road that was regularly cleared. On the way down we kept seeing people walking up carrying their bags (lots of people), seemed strange because the road wasn't that bad and there were still cars coming up (some without snow chains on) any way further on down closer to the main road there is a coach parked up, he has no chains on. Behind him there are a line of cars and coaches, some with chains and some without. They can't move because the stuck cars and coaches are blocking the road.
If they all had put their chains on in good time there would have been no problem, the queue behind them was pretty much stationary all the way down to Vizille (about 20 miles).
Took us about 4 hours to do an hour and three quarter journey as there were also some queues and slow moving traffic going down.
We didn't even know how bad it was until we saw the news and heard about all those trapped on the mountain roads.

Winter Tyres - Watch This - Buy Some!

Yes Sir :!:

Ordered a set of Dunlop SP-Winter-Sport-4D today. Due to be delivered in 6 days.

smartski wrote:Yes Sir :!:

Good man (and good tyres, I believe)! Where are you off to?

Admin wrote: Where are you off to?

The winter tyres are for going to La Plagne with the family - first time driving in Alps.
(But I've got a Val D'Isere "Dads' trip" (flying) before that.)

I am firmly of the view that winter tyres are an essential piece of kit when travelling to ski resorts.

However, I am travelling to the Dolomites in February and cannot get them from any of the car hire companies in Venice, despite the Italians introducing new regulations requiring cars in the alpine areas to be properly "equipped" :twisted:. It would appear that having chains meets the legal requirement.

I feel I have no choice but to take a very expensive taxi transfer instead. Its very frustrating :evil: :evil: :evil:.

Just got some for the OH's Mito. But now I see the temps down here in Devon are going to be high for the next week or so and thus have delayed fitting them.

Wanderer wrote:I am firmly of the view that winter tyres are an essential piece of kit when travelling to ski resorts.

However, I am travelling to the Dolomites in February and cannot get them from any of the car hire companies in Venice, despite the Italians introducing new regulations requiring cars in the alpine areas to be properly "equipped" :twisted:. It would appear that having chains meets the legal requirement.

I feel I have no choice but to take a very expensive taxi transfer instead. Its very frustrating :evil: :evil: :evil:.

I rented a car at Munich a couple of years ago and drove to AUSTRIA. The hire company said winter tyres were a chargeable extra when I went to pick the car up, something ridiculous like 30EU a day so I said I would stick with regular tyres. Low and behold, all the rental cars had winter tyres fitted to them anyway, so it was all a massive scam to get you to pay extra!!!! And that was AVIS!!!!