When winter sets in and temperatures drop dramatically, snow and ice on the roads makes driving much more difficult and dangerous. Fortunately there is a way to greatly improve your driving safety in winter conditions - let us fit winter tyres for you!

Winter tyres remain flexible and grip better when temperatures are low because they contain a greater amount of natural rubber and silicone. Irrespective of differing thread patterns they all have a large number of tiny lateral grooves called Sipes, these bite into the snow and ice and grip the road.

There is a common misconception that winter tyres are only necessary when there is ice or heavy snow, but that is not correct. Whenever temperatures drop to below seven degrees regular "all season" tyres rapidly become less flexible so they lose their ability to grip the road. This dramatically increases your stopping distance, which can be very dangerous.

Another misconception is that changing to winter tyres will effect your insurance. The AA advises that this isn't the case. Insurers are happy with winter tyres as long as they are professionally fitted and conform to the car manufacturer's tyre specification.

As winter driving is generally slower, leading manufacturers advise that it is acceptable to reduce the speed rating of winter tyres. A car normally fitted with Y speed rated tyres can therefore be legally fitted with two speed ratings lower which is V, while W can be lowered to H and V can be dropped to T.

A car fitted with just two winter tyres can actually be more dangerous as it can lead to unbalanced and therefore unsafe handling and so for safety reasons, leading tyre manufacturers recommend only fitting winter tyres in sets of four.

Here at etyres we specialise in winter tyres and we offer many different brands and sizes. They are a bit more expensive than regular tyres, however, they can still work out cheaper than getting stranded or having an accident.

etyres offer a mobile fitting service for winter tyres and in the Spring, for a nominal charge, we will come back and change them over for our customers all season or Summer tyres.