Proper driver training is needed for all vehicles.

Driving is a necessity for most Canadians. Most use their cars as a transportation tool, some for pleasure and others, as part of their work. Government committees have been established to reduce the number of fatalities and serious injuries caused by collisions on our roads. At last census, the recent year over year reductions have been significant, mostly due to better vehicles (stability control systems, crash-worthy) and increased seat-belt compliance. Drivers have been left to improve their statistic on the road by a series of restrictions and penalties with the hope of making them better.

In my 35 years of high performance driving and coaching, I have never seen a naturally competent driver. However, I have seen thousands of drivers benefit from a day of driving information and practise, advanced driver training. After this initial driver training day, newly developed skills can be practised each time in the car. All leading to the goal of becoming a competent and safe driver. I wish this for your family, friends, and work associates.

Many of you have purchased winter tires for yourself, your family, and/or your company vehicles. Simply, winter tires maximize every drivers’ chances for safe passage on our Canadian winter roads. However, few drivers are able to use these tires to their best advantage (emergency braking, collision avoidance, skid control) if something unexpected occurs on their travels. To this end, the Bridgestone Canadian Winter Driver Training Program is pleased to announce that the first consumer day will be Saturday December 17th at Mosport’s DDT.

Chances are that there will be snow by that time. Nature’s failing will force us to provide slippery conditions with a water truck. Time is from 9:30am to 4:00pm. Cost is $295 (pre-registered) or $350 at the gate (all plus HST). Special pricing for families of four and adults with teens. Lunch will be provided. Reservations accepted now.

Each autumn, the refrain used to be the same: “Time to put on the knobbies!” Winter was on its way.

There’s a good reason they were called “knobbies,” since the old-fashioned winter tires were made up of large blocks of tread – each tread block being four times the size of those on a normal tire.

At the time, these tires with their big tread blocks were the best things for digging through snow, slush and mud. Unsophisticated though it might seem, the thinking was that big pieces of rubber can dig better than smaller ones. This was back when engineering worked by the “eyeball method”: if it looks good, make it.

Of course, these big treads also vibrated and howled on asphalt, and unless you lived in the far north, the roads were cleared within days of a snowfall anyway. So you had to put up with a lot to get snow traction.

More importantly, this type of snow tire had little grip on ice or asphalt – and poor grip on pavement. Another downside was that they wore very quickly, so they were expensive on a per-kilometre basis. Still, they got a lot of people where they had to go with greater safety than a summer tire.

Then along came a little more science: tiremakers started adding sipes, or miniature cuts, into the tread blocks. They did improve a tire’s traction, especially on ice.

Then, in 1988, the Bridgestone Blizzak overtook plain siped tires with its ability to grip ice. Instead of tiny sipes, Blizzaks were a “multi-cell compound” in which the rubber was filled with microscopic air pockets. Cut in cross-section and viewed under a microscope, the rubber looked like one of those mousse-filled candy bars.

The tiny cells gripped ice like a wool sock, but that made the tire a bit squirmy and subject to faster wear.

But the idea of improved grip on ice resonated with consumers and Blizzak stormed the market. Bridgestone stiffened the compound to improve the wear. Other manufacturers took note of its success, and so the race was on.

Other manufacturers worked on developing their own formula for improving ice grip: Toyo added ground walnuts, Goodyear added volcanic sand; both worked.

As technology improved, so did the the rubber, the grooves between the tread blocks got smaller on winter tires. Grip could be achieved by better designed tread blocks, more sipes and the addition of air bubbles in the rubber.

And unlike “knobbies” of old, new winter tires no longer howl like a banshee at Halloween: engineers now make the tread blocks slightly different sizes so the noise is self-cancelling.

By John Mahler
Originally published in the Toronto Star.

We all like to save a little money, but scrimping on the number of winter tires on your car is not an option.

Winter driving is all about traction, we all agree on that. But traction goes beyond just the power to go forward. Traction also includes the ability to stop and turn. In my book, stopping and turning are far more important than traction to get the car going.

If you cannot get the car moving forward out of your parking spot, you are not much of a danger to anyone. If you are approaching an intersection with stopped cars and you cannot stop, then you are a danger to yourself and to others. If the road curves left and your car cannot make the turn and goes straight, that is a dangerous situation.

Tires must be equal on all corners of the car for the car to work properly. Try running out the door into the snow with one winter boot on and one running shoe; see how far you get before the inevitable tumble. That is your car on mixed tires.

Were we to put winter tires on just the front of the car, it would do well at steering, braking and — in the case of front-wheel drive — would also get traction.

That sounds ideal, but in reality the car would spin under heavy braking. As weight is transferred forward in braking, the contact patch of the rear tires gets smaller. Smaller means less grip. If the vehicle is not 100 per cent straight as this occurs, there is a tendency for the car to want to rotate.

If we have the better-gripping winter tires on the rear only, the back of the car will have more grip than the front. That means we will now have more traction to go in a straight line than we do for turning or stopping. If the vehicle is rear-wheel drive, this will be especially bad because entering a curve, the back of the car will push the front tires beyond their traction limits and the car will go straight.

Your car left the factory as a well-balanced machine, each corner having an equal ability to do its job. Make sure you don’t change that; your safety depends on it.

By John Mahler
Originally published in the Toronto Star.

This is the time of year when the same discussion is heard in many offices, coffee shops and homes: should I put winter tires on my vehicle?

The answer is a definitive and resounding “Yes,” if you want maximum safety.

Whatever you have on your car, high performance summer tires or all-season tires, you will not get maximum grip on cold mornings unless you are on winter tires.

All tires have a temperature range they like to work in to give you their best performance. Summer tires like it hot, all-season tires like all things moderate and, of course, winter tires like it cold.

No big surprises there. What may surprise some drivers, however, is that all these different types of tires all have somewhat equal grip when the temperature is 7 degrees C or above.

Above that magic number, the summer tire develops grip on a steep curve as temperatures climb; the all-season tire less so.

As temperatures drop below 7 C, however, the winter tire develops more grip, the all-season tire loses grip and the summer tire is just about useless.

As we approach November, when temperatures in the morning will be just above freezing, you can bet that the pavement will be very cold. Winter tires have rubber compounds formulated to stay soft and pliable for better traction in cold weather, something that all-season tries don’t have.

To better understand how traction works, we have to think small. Up really, really close, that smooth pavement underneath your car actually looks a lot like the Canadian Rockies. The pavement is all sharp points, with deep valleys in between; it is a very irregular landscape. A tire’s surface is like that as well, made up of irregular hills and valleys. When the car rolls along and these two surfaces — rubber and road — meet, they must interlace for good grip.

The tire rubber must be flexible enough to wiggle and fit into the microscopic grooves in the pavement. The tire can then achieve maximum contact and use all of its surface to push off as it moves forward. If the tire rubber is not flexible, it cannot get into the microscopic grooves in the pavement. In that case, the contact surface area is just a fraction of what would be possible if the tire was flexible.

Try interlacing your fingers to bring the palms of your hands together. You can see the size of the contact area and how strong it is. That is your winter tire on pavement.

Now try placing your hands fingertip to fingertip. There is little contact area and if one hand pushes on the other, it slips. That is your car on stiff all-season tires on cold pavement. Small surface area equals small friction patch equals small grip.

All of this friction information depends on the pavement area being cold, dry and bare. Now add the lubricating qualities of water or slush or snow and you can see that the grip situation just gets worse.

There are many types of winter tires. Some are designed to be specialists in ice or snow, some are high-speed rated. There are even a few winter tires that can be left on the car year-round.

Current generation winter tires have shed some of the characteristics that annoyed drivers previously. For instance, these tires no longer generate loud buzzing noises at speed on the highway because they no longer have the huge blocks of tread that used to make cars squirm and jiggle whenever the brakes were applied.

If cost is a consideration, remember that your winter tires wear less in cold weather than all-season tires. All-season tires wear considerably faster when driven in winter. A Swiss auto club study showed that total tire costs for a sedan after five years were less when the car switched between winter and summer tires.

By John Mahler
Originally published in the Toronto Star.

Each winter hundreds of unskilled, untrained drivers settle behind the steering wheel of their car and head for the roads, literally taking take their lives and those of others around them in their own hands. Our goal is to make you the safest driver you can be. Our winter driving training exists to help you build your driving confidence no matter what the weather throws at you and in Canada we know that can be a lot at times, especially during the winter season.

The Bridgestone Canadian Winter Driver Training team of qualified instructors is committed to helping you improve all aspects of your winter driving. Our top concern is promoting safe passage for yourself, family and friends – safety in knowing how to act and react at the wheel during a crisis situation.

Bridgestone Canadian Winter Driver Training welcomes the full range of both young and seasoned drivers. No matter where you feel your driving ability stands, from the novice to the seasoned driver, we have something for you to learn at our winter school.

At our school you will be driving your own car and we’re certain you’ll to get to know it better. Everyone receives one-on-one professional, in-car instruction from our highly trained team of instructor/coaches.

A morning classroom session is followed by carefully selected driving exercises that will teach you emergency braking, skid control and collision avoidance. Lunch is included along with a course completion certificate at the end of the day. And at the end of the day you’re going to head for home as a much more confident driver.

Our sessions will better prepare you to evaluate your ability to successfully drive on days like these because after a day training with us you will have already experienced the sensation of your car on the edge – in our controlled environment. Extensive use of the slippery skidpad area will provide training in vision, throttle control, skid recovery and collision avoidance.

The job of our experienced instructor/coaches is to help you learn your driving skill limits and expand that performance envelope in a safe way. Many years of “seat time” have taught our instructors to feel the car’s responses to your inputs and anticipate any handling issues before they occur. Our staff will help you “learn to listen” to your car, all the while building your confidence on the track.

The Bridgestone Winter Driving School in the U.S. points out on their own web page that “the top drivers in Drifting, Rally and most every form of road racing have something in common: they have trained on ice and snow. These drivers know that poor driving technique is magnified by slippery surfaces – make a mistake and you are off the road. When you master driving on ice, every other surface becomes that much easier to handle.”

Every morning now, the driving gets a little lumpier, as those all-season tires work out the flat spots on their bottoms from parking overnight.

That thump, thump, thump is a message. The all-season rubber on your car is just not happy trying to flex any muscle to grip the pavement as temperatures drop.

Those are the signs that tell you now is the time to change over your tires to winter rubber.

Tire grip fades as temperatures drop; that is one of the basic laws of driving. However, there is an amendment to that law, winter tires increase grip as the mercury plunges. That amendment to the law kicks in at about 7 C above zero. As all-season tires’ rubber hardens and grip drops, winter tires stay soft and increase their gripping qualities. The colder it gets the happier and grippier they get.

Once upon a time snow tires were just that, snow tires. The plan was always line up at the local garage for the changeover when the weather forecaster frowned and said those ominous words, “snow clouds on the horizon.” Now technology has morphed snow tires into winter tires. These winter tires show performance improvements over high performance and all-season tires on dry clean pavement even at slightly above zero temperatures.

Many readers in the GTA think that because our major streets are plowed clear of snow, they can drive on their all-season tires. These one-tire drivers are happy in their belief that they will not get stuck. That is true, but what they forget is that driving also consists of braking and turning. Braking and turning can get a driver around a stopped problem and for that, we need grip.

Last winter the Star Wheels section did a few tests to check if winter tires really were better at dealing with life’s on-road emergencies when the temperatures were low and the pavement bare. Canadian Tire Corporation was eager to help and supplied three sets of tires for evaluation; their own Goodyear Nordic winter tire, a Goodyear Allegra all-season tire and a high performance tire, the new generation Goodyear Eagle GT. It turned out the Eagle was also classed as an all-season but its performance heavily skewed for summer grip.

Mosport was kind enough to provide their skid pad and Jack Benzacar of tirebutler.com provided one of his trucks and tire changing crew. We ran the tests twice to see what the different winter temperatures did to the results. Fellow driving instructors Gerry Low and Rick Morelli helped pilot my trusty Jetta through the tests.

In February at -12 to -14 C and heavily overcast, the skid pad numbers showed the Nordic was a clear winner at .433 G, the all-season Allegra came in at .397 G of grip while the big fat Eagle GT managed .370 G. I mention the width because while all the tires were nominally the same size, the Eagle was built wider to maximize its summer grip. That extra width probably gave it an unfair advantage in all our tests.

In March when the thermometer hovered around a balmy -6 C and the sun was shining the grip improved dramatically. The Nordic produced .727 G, the Allegra came close at .700 but the Eagle GT still trailed at .601 G. The warmer and sunnier day improved all the tires’ grip but still not up to summer standards. I would expect the Eagle GT to produce summer numbers above .86 G.

Emergency braking to me is what really matters when things go sideways in front of me. In February, with the temperature at -14 C and no sun on the pavement, panic stops from 80 km/h produced stopping distances of 49 metres for the summer Eagle GT, 39 metres for the Allegra all-season, and just 34 metres for the CTC/Goodyear Nordic Winter tire.

When the sunny skies of March heated the pavement and the air temperature was -6 C, we tried the same panic stops. The Eagle GT improved to a stunning 27.3 metres. That just shows how much some sun can affect tire performance. The Allegra stopped in 19.3 metres but the Nordic Winter still beat that at 16.6 metres.

To consider how well these tires can take evasive action on winter tarmac, we set up a simple slalom with cones placed 10 steps apart and a very sharp left turn at the end. Again the Nordic Winter set the pace with a time of 21.3 seconds in February when it was cloudy and 14 below. The all-season Allegra came next at 22.1 seconds and the summer sports tire clocked in at 24.6 seconds.

In March with the sun out and air temperatures of just -2.5 C, the Nordic tripped the timer at 16.2 seconds for the same slalom. The all-season came in at 16.63 seconds and the summer Eagle managed 18.02 seconds.

The finishing order was much closer but the order prevailed; winter tire, all-season tire and then the summer tire. The big surprise was the decrease in the times by each tire when sunshine had heated the pavement from dawn until about 11:30 a.m. when we ran the slalom test.

Stopping distance spreads of 15 metres at -14 C can create a huge safety buffer for any driver, just by switching tires for the winter. Even at -6 C, the spread was 10.7 metres better for the winter versus the summer tire. Isn’t it time to switch over now?

Originally published in the Toronto Star.