This is done to sacrifice comfort for performance and safety. However in reasonable amounts of mud and snow, tires should be thinner. The type of rubber and the tread pattern best suited for use under summer conditions cannot, for technical reasons, give good performance on snow and ice. The first set of winter tires tested by author Michael Clark are Pirelli Winter 240 Snowsports. Tires are specified by the vehicle manufacturer with a recommended inflation pressure, which permits safe operation within the specified load rating and vehicle loading.

An AWD car can slide just as well as a RWD at speed, its the tires that help avoid that as much as possible. The tread is the part of the tire that comes in contact with the road surface. The tread is a thick rubber, or rubber/composite compound formulated to provide an appropriate level of traction that does not wear away too quickly. As the rubber deforms and recovers it imparts cyclical forces into the vehicle. The All Season tire classification is a compromise between one developed for use on dry and wet roads during summer and one developed for use under winter conditions.

Most tires are stamped with a maximum pressure rating (for U.S. only). This increases the entire roll movement of the car, and diminishes tire contact area on the negative side of the vector. Leading up to this move, I had done a lot of research on the web on snow tires vs AWD for winter driving.