Anyone who has ever driven in the snow knows that winter tires are a good idea. All-season radials just don't cut it in the snowy regions of the country, particularly if they have some mileage on them.When I lived in Montreal, I had snow tires. Montreal gets a lot of snow. It was stupid not to put winter tires on your car. Hence, Quebec's recent move to make winter tires mandatory is largely redundant. Most people use them. Those that don't get into more accidents.
In published reports, the head of a Quebec task force on road safety, Jean-Marie de Koninck, pointed to statistics showing snow tires help save lives.
"There's about 10% of the people right now that don't have winter tires on and they're involved in 38% of the accidents on the road in the winter," de Koninck said before Christmas.
The simple solution is for insurers to charge lower premiums to drivers who put snow tires on their cars than to drivers who do not. Quebec's system of no-fault insurance is probably behind its move to preempt a market solution to the problem since the driver who is responsible for an accident does not bear the full cost of the damage he causes. As a result, his future insurance premiums will reflect only the damage done to his own car.
Which brings us to Dalton McGuinty.
Ontario may follow the lead of its provincial neighbour and make winter snow tires madatory for winter driving.
[...]Premier Dalton McGuinty has said he will consider making it a law in Ontario and OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino has already said he is behind the idea.
Have you seen car insurance premiums in this province? Get into one at-fault accident and your premiums will skyrocket. What better incentive is there to put snow tires on your car than that? That is, if you really need them at all.
Here in Toronto, we don't get a lot of snow. What we do get tends to melt quickly, aided by prodigious amounts of salt.
Do the math. If you only drive in southern Ontario and avoid driving the two or three times a season when we might get a meaningful amount of snow, it makes little economic sense to spend hundreds of dollars on snow tires. Moreover, cars with snow tires are considerably less fuel efficient. If you drive on snow-free roads the rest of the time, you will be burning extra gas.
That doesn't sound like the environmentally correct thing to do. And if the climate change lobby is to be believed, it will only hasten the rise in average temperatures in Ontario.
With winter in Ontario supposedly on the endangered list, why would McGuinty even consider making winter tires mandatory in Ontario? One can only conclude that if Dalton does go ahead with this, he doesn't believe his own hype about global warming.
