Winter driving tips
With winter weather firmly upon many of us in the USA, including many areas that don’t normally receive any kind of snow or ice, we thought it would be a good idea to offer some tips that those of us in the great white north use every year.
Unlike areas where it doesn’t snow frequently, here in northern New England, they don’t declare a state of emergency for a few inches (or feet) of snow. We just soldier on. Audi owners, we call this “quattro weather”. Driving in snow can be a lot of fun, but you still need to prepare.
Tires are everything. Yes, quattro is a great drivetrain, but as with everything, if the tires have no grip, it doesn’t matter how many tires you have being driven, zero x zero = zero. In a world of huge wheels and wide low profile high performance tires, snow tires want to be soft, tall and skinny to cut through powder and grip ice.
Modern snow tires use special rubber compounds to remain flexible in the coldest of temperatures, and this is part of the reason they work so well. Even good all season tires become stiff and slippery in sub-freezing temperatures, and stiff tires don’t grip well.
Quattro won’t help you stop. See above regarding tires. We have personal experience with driving quattro cars in snow that have non-snow tires, where the car can propel itself just fine, but then refuses to turn, or stop. Again, snow tires are the most important thing you can have on your car when it gets nasty out. The best ABS and ESP systems can’t overcome physics. If your ABS spends all its time preventing lockup, it won’t spend any time braking, and you’ll roll right through the stop sign, or right into the car in front of you in traffic.
Clear the snow off the car. Yes, this seems obvious, but it’s really important. If you can’t see out of the car, you’ll crash. If you have a huge pile of snow on your roof, and it blows off onto the car behind you, they will crash. Either way, it’s not cool to drive around with a ton of snow on your car.
Easy does it. We love going out and playing in the snow in our Audis. Restraint is very important though, because it’s way too easy to make an expensive mistake and slide your car into a ditch or tree. Our advice is to always play away from traffic whenever possible.
The best thing you can do is take an advanced driving course. A few years we went up to the Team O’Neil rally school to take their Winter Safety school, and came away amazed at what a good school can teach even an old dog. We would HIGHLY recommend this school to anyone who wants to hone their winter driving skills.