Wet traction vs braking - Yokahama Avid Touring S

[ledslinger]

I did 110 miles in fairly heavy rain at times yesterday, and was surprised I spun a tire with moderate throttle application from a stop light in an auto trans front wheel drive car. I've read test results of Yokahama Avid Touring S and the wet performance kept it from being rated at the top of the tested tires. I wonder if the solid center ribs may harm the wet performance of this tire.

A few questions about wet performance. Is wet traction and wet braking closely correlated? They both are forms of linear traction one pulling and one resisting. Wet braking probably is more dependent on the treads ability to channel water than wet traction.

Does a tires wet traction and braking correlate to wet cornering performance? This could be an entirely different when the forces become lateral.

What is your experience with wet performance with Yokahama Avid Touring S? Reviews and one surprising loss of traction during rain plus the wet reviews may make me hesitant to recommend this excellent tire for drivers living in high rain areas. It may be I just happened to accelerate on a wet oily spot and need to do further road testing before I condemn these tires wet performance.

 

[nitehawk55]

If you vehicle has snappy acceleration that may be the case but I have also found that stop light areas have deposits that tend to make those areas slippery .

I've found tire reviews all over the place , it's really hard to get a good read on good or bad .

 

[CapriRacer]

I like to think of wet traction as 2 components: wet grip and hydroplaning - where hydroplaning subtracts from wet grip to get wet traction.

So from the point of view of the tire, slow speeds have little effect on wet traction, but higher speeds do.

But wet grip is a function of both the tire (and in particular, the tread rubber compound), and the road surface. I have seen studies that show that certain road surfaces have wet coefficients comparable to ice.

And, yes, lateral wet grip is different than longitudinal wet grip.

And one last thought: Tires don't follow classical friction theory in that they interact with the road surface to produce grip - and a 10% to 15% slippage is where grip is maximum. That means that braking and accelerating are different - and braking would tend to drive water in front of the tire, where accelerating would tend to drive water into the footprint.