Does your AWD car with summer tires brake better in icy conditions than your FWD?

Of course something on harder tires will not brake and turn as well as something on softer tires.

The reduced ability to stop and turn has lead to in my snow driving experience, far, far fewer "that could have easily gone worse" situations than a lack of ability to gracefully put power to the ground.

I don't get why everyone obsesses over stopping and turning and shills snow tires. There's a reason that everyone and their brother buys an AWD vehicle and far fewer people buy snow tires. Everyone(TM) can't be wrong.

What I want you to tell me is why I should prioritize braking and steering if they're not the bottlenecks I encounter when driving in the snow.

> I don't get why everyone obsesses over stopping and turning and shills snow tires.

Most accidents are caused by failure to stop and failure to turn, not failure to accelerate.

> There's a reason that everyone and their brother buys an AWD vehicle and far fewer people buy snow tires.

You clearly live in a very different place than me - very few passenger vehicles are available with AWD (subarus, trucks, some SUVs). But everyone has snow tires.

> What I want you to tell me is why I should prioritize braking and steering if they're not the bottlenecks I encounter when driving in the snow

Great for you? Again, you clearly live in a place with very different conditions than I do. What about the conditions make it so that you can't accelerate, but you can turn or brake just fine?

I live in Minnesota and very few people buy snow tires, and most balk at it. They don't realize the difference it makes.

I regularly drive in conditions in my damned Camaro where the only other vehicles on the road are trucks, with some of them not being on the road anymore.

Interestingly, I'm finding more and more standard vehicles with tires with the M+S designation on the sidewall that makes them legally Snow Tires. I don't expect these have the same performance in the midwest snow as purpose-built snow tires, but they should qualify from a legal sense for chain restrictions and the like.

You're not wrong in the sense that snow tires are designed first to stop you. Not to start you. But if you call snow tires on a FWD "kool-aid" I completely disagree with you there. unless maybe you bought "true" all seasons (tires where some of the tread is like a winter tire), which are still relatively new and have a lot of tread depth. Those can probably get you by OK to where you would think true snow tires aren't worth it. But once they wear I'd still take worn snow tires over them any day. Source - Worked at a large tire wholesaler. Driven multiple FWD cars with true all seasons and true winters in winter conditions.

I've lived it (these were proper studded snow tires). The improvement is there any very tangible but there's a reason I put the wife in the AWD one.

I agree that tread depth is massively important in the slushy conditions that commutes in the snow devolve into. You need that depth to provide a path for the "thick water" to GTFO so you're not hydroplaning on slush.

I've seen the true all seasons more and more. Both my and my mom's car have standard tires from the manufacturer, yet both also have the M+S designation that indicates a Mud and Snow tire. Are these tires of the form you describe?

It sounds to me like you already have picked this up but that M+S designation is kind of 'generously' applied in my opinion. At best it's relative. They will be better than a tire designed for dry pavement performance. But still range widely to how they perform compared to actual mud or snow tires.