In areas with more snow on the roads in winter, there is an old belief that underinflated tires are better for driving in snow because they make more contact with the ground.
Tires on a car have several very important functions. In addition to carrying the weight of the vehicle, car tires soften the impact when the vehicle encounters bumps, potholes or other obstacles on the road.
When the weather changes, like now, it is very important that your tires are properly inflated.
As we wrote at the beginning, when there is snow, many claim that the tires should be less inflated to have more contact with the ground.
While this isn’t technically wrong (it’s sometimes useful for getting out of deep sand more easily), it’s actually never safe to drive with low tire pressure on purpose, even in snow and cold temperatures.
Driving with underinflated tires in the winter, with snowfall, multiplies the likelihood of a tire crash, according to a study by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That’s why only properly inflated tires drive better on snow, save fuel and last, but not least, last longer.
We normally inflate car tires of most models to a pressure of 2 to 2.4 bar, and the recommended figure for your car, which is usually displayed on a sticker somewhere on the car (usually on the inner sheet metal or door frame, or on the fuel flap), should will be applied throughout the year, since there are no different numbers for summer or winter, writes Autoklub.
Temperature affects pressure
However, the outside temperature still affects the tire pressure, so in the winter, when the “minus” arrives, you will have to check and fill the tires with air more often than in the summer months in order to maintain the ideal pressure, which is one of the most important factors for driving safety. Autoklub writes.
In practice, many tire manufacturers estimate that they lose 0.06 bar for every 10 degree drop in outside temperature. Also, parking a car for a long time in winter usually greets the owner with partially deflated tires.
Useful:
If your car has a tire pressure monitoring system, the warning light will activate when the pressure drops by at least 25 percent. This “little thing” is especially useful for monitoring tire pressure in cold weather.
If you don’t have this sensor, check the tires already after your car has been parked for only a few hours (driving raises the air temperature and thus the air pressure in the tires) to get the most accurate loss figure compared to the prescribed one.
Be sure to check the recommended pressure for the front and rear tires, because usually the front ones are inflated by about 0.2 bar more than the rear ones due to the weight of the engine under the hood, writes Autoklub.
Source:
Danas.rs
Photo: Autoblog.rs Archive / Continental
Source: autoblog.rs
