‘Many more cars on winter tires this summer’

As the name suggests, winter tires are meant for winter. Yet there are plenty of people who just leave them under the car in the summer. Maybe because they don’t feel like changing, sometimes because it is forgotten, but there are undoubtedly also people who have no idea that there are winter tires under the car at all. Whatever the reason; this year many more people continue to use it than last year, the Bovag notes.

The trade association conducted research among 1,248 passenger cars and found winter tires in 7.8 percent. This while in recent years winter tires were found on average in 5.5 percent of cars in the summer. In practice, according to Bovag, this means that about 730,000 cars in the Netherlands drove on winter tires this summer, where there were still about 500,000 in 2021.

There are several drawbacks to continuing to drive on winter tires in the drier and warmer months. The braking distance is then longer than on summer tires or all-season tyres, the fuel consumption is higher and they also produce more noise and particulate matter. It is also bad for the tires themselves, which wear out faster. The advice is therefore certainly to change the tires in time for summer tires, or simply drive on four-season tires all year round.