Category: Winter Driving

Learn about winter driving skills and safety from Derek Brown’s Academy of Driving’s blog.

Why All Season Tires Don’t Cut it For Alberta Winters

“My all season tires are good enough.” This sentence is often heard, even during Calgary winters while we fight the snowy weather on our missions to get where we’re going.

However, anyone who has experienced the benefits of winter tires knows the truth: All season tires, despite the name, are not good enough for all seasons. Most certainly not Calgary’s seasons.

“All season tires” should really be read like this:

“All season* tires (* seasonal flexibility refers to wet and dry seasons, not hot and cold.)”

This is something we tell students a lot at our Calgary driving school. This is because the defining feature of an “all season” tire is the tread patterns, which are designed to prevent hydroplaning on wet roads.

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Cars driving on a snowy highway.

Defensive Driving for Winter Weather

Some days, it seems like a lot of the drivers we share the road with are getting more and more “unpredictable”.

From parking on sidewalks and stopping for pedestrians in the pedestrian crosswalk to weaving all over the road in high-speed traffic (and any other example you can think of), it seems like we sometimes commute alongside some fairly erratic drivers.

And that’s not even taking the weather into account!

Bring in some cold and snowy weather, and these erratic drivers become even worse. What was an everyday danger on the road now becomes a veritable hazard.

That driver up ahead who drifted into the middle of 2 lanes while looking at his phone? He’s now in an uncontrolled slide across your path, headed straight into the vehicle driving to your far right. You and every other vehicle nearby are at risk of a serious collision.

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Six Winter Driving Tips

Use our winter driving tips on this snowy street in Calgary.

As Canadians, we like to think that we have winter driving mastered. But one look at the accident statistics after a fresh snowfall tells us otherwise. Even for those of us who have attended (or even operate) a driving school, Calgary roads can be treacherous after a fresh snowfall.

For example, this past Christmas Eve saw approx. 4cms (1.5 inches) of snow fall within a 12 hour period of time.[1] The result? Over 300 vehicular accidents throughout Southern Alberta.[2]

With this in mind, we at Derek Brown’s Academy of Driving thought it might be a good idea to write a blog post about driving safely in the winter.

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