Again, I'm well aware. There are those who don't buy snow tires where I live in an area that can and does get heavy snowfall every year. Those people struggle. All too often they end up in a ditch or crash, or stay home ( if they have that option) when the weather gets bad.
It's predictable. There's a heavy snowfall, a slew of crashes, and more often than not the Highway Patrol will show the completely inadequate tires on the crashed vehicles on the local News.
My point to John is that the tires on his Minivan could be a liability under the conditions his wife might have to drive through. So drive accordingly, or don't drive if it's too bad.
Yes, at home in TN all-seasons are just fine. Unfortunately, the wife and kids aren't in TN at the moment, and could find themselves in treacherous conditions.
I hope my concern is now clear.
Your concern is valid and well-taken.
After seeing the forecast, I was kicking myself a bit for going cheap and not spending the few hundred extra on my original choice - the Goodyear Assurance WeatherReady 2, which is an “All-Weather” 3PMS-rated, directional tire that is modeled strongly after the Michelin Cross Climate 2.
I am still happy with my choice of the Tour54, because for almost all of our driving, the extra snow/ice capability goes unused, and although the Tour54 isn’t super highly rated in winter conditions, it’s not horrible, and certainly a lot better than the tires of times past that our parents and grandparents made do with. Not to mention a lot of other drivers on the road who are running worn out crap tires.
And it helps that they’re brand-new with good, sharp biting edges.
But in times like this, it does make you wish you had that extra winter capability.
Anyway, since I don’t have to be back at work until Wednesday, I decided to rent a car one-way and drive up to Warsaw and drive them back. My area of Tennessee had zero availability of rental cars, so I drove to Evansville Airport (which is on the way) to get a rental. They didn’t get any snow that far south. Turned out that Avis was running a 50% off special for an upgrade, so I ended up with a pretty sweet rental - a loaded 4WD Telluride for only $100 total. So we’ll just swing back through on the way back tomorrow and pick up my Elantra N. Luckily it’s only $8 at day to park there.
Not that I don’t trust my wife’s driving - far from it. But it’ll make me feel better to be driving them myself, and I’ll be there to help her with the kiddos (they’re 1, 2, 3, and 4 now), and I’ll be there in case anything were to happen.
Heck they’ve already had one minor but irritating incident on their trip that unfortunately resulted in damage to the 2024 Odyssey.
They were driving to thanksgiving dinner when they came to a traffic light. My wife and kids were in the left lane and an older woman was in her Chrysler Voyager in the turning lane. Suddenly the woman in the Voyager decided she wanted to get out of the turning lane and instead go straight. So what does she do? She throws it into reverse and attempts to back up and maneuver, in reverse, into the lane my wife is in.
My wife saw her heading directly towards her and sat on the horn. The woman kept coming, and the corner of the rear bumper hit my wife’s driver door.
I’m so mad about that. So dumb and unnecessary. Thankfully, I guess, apparently it didn’t dent the door, and just scratched/scuffed it. But still. We work hard to keep our vehicles nice, park far away in parking lots to avoid uncaring, unscrupulous people, and then someone pulls a random bonehead move like this in traffic.
The woman said she “was running late to Thanksgiving dinner”.
Oh well. I’m just glad everyone was OK. Ill
Assess the damage and figure out whether to take it to a body shop on that woman’s insurance. Luckily she was insured, I guess.
. I try and have conversations with them but it's futile and not really worth the effort. The whole family tends to have poor driving habits and accidents especially in bad weather and can't understand why. They have lived in NY all their lives.
