The first moderate frost of this winter is a fact. In some places in the Netherlands it was terribly slippery last night and this morning. And then a large part of the Dutch are afraid to get in the car. In fact, many people simply leave the car in bad weather conditions.
Insurer Allianz Direct has carried out a representative survey, which shows that almost half of the people with a driving license do not like to drive in bad weather. A quarter of those surveyed say they leave the car at home when it rains, storms or snows hard. If it is slippery or if it is icy, more than a third do not get into the car.
Fear of snow, ice and slipperiness, so winter tires under the car?
A bit of a useless statistic in the survey is that 38 percent of the respondents own winter tires, of which 93 percent actually fit them under the car. Are those winter tire drivers (35 percent) the people who are anxious? Or are they just the people who don’t mind driving in the dark months?
There is a threat of a shortage of winter tires in the Netherlands this year
If you want to fit your car with winter tires this year, you may be fishing off the net. In the past ten years, the stock in the Netherlands has never been this low, according to research by a tire portal. The main reasons are the skyrocketing container rates since the beginning of this year and the new winter tire obligation in the French mountain areas.
The scarcity has led to people looking for winter tires en masse on Marktplaats. Normally this only happens when winter showers are announced, such as in February this year, but now in October there was already a huge peak of 150,000 searches. That is three times as much as in the same month in 2020.