Tire Siping - Better Traction via altering your tires

[[iSEPIC]]

Sorry if this was already posted, its new to me, I think its cool, so I'm sharing

I can only wonder how it will affect the tread-life.


http://www.discounttire.com/dtc/brochure/tire/tireSiping.jsp

Discount Tire/America’s Tire Co. now offers the revolutionary tire “Siping” procedure. Check out the information below to find out how you can improve your traction in poor weather driving environments.


Siping can be performed on brand new tires, as well as used tires which have at least 50% of the original tread left. Our Saf-Tee siping machines cut thousands of slits across the facing of the tire tread, from 5/32" to 11/32" deep. These slits create thousands of sharp, gripping edges to provide extra traction and safer braking under wet, icy, and snowy conditions. The slits are so thin, no loss of rubber occurs and the results are similar to studding your tires.

 

[slythetove]

Tests conducted by the National Safety Council on the performance of siped vs. unsiped tires on ice resulted in a 64% increase in breakaway traction and an increase of 28% spinning traction. In stopping distance tests, the reduction was from 200 feet to 155.6 feet—a 22% improvement.

Sounds great for ice and/or water....

But make no mistake... for a dry road the best traction possible is on a slick. Slicks have no grooves at all for a reason. That's because the absolute most rubber possible is involved in the contact patch.

I doubt greatly that this will improve dry traction, and I would guess it could actually hurt it.

 

[[iSEPIC]]

I know that slicks are slicks and slicks are the best because, like you said, more contact area, but I guess it doesn't make sense that if this proceedure makes more friction on ICE, how it can't make more friction on regular roads??? (thinking back to HS physics class...hmm) unless of course the pressure of the weight of the car on the ice, melts it creating some water, then the water is fed up into the grooves, and then allowing more contact area between the ice and the rubber... hmmm

 

[Cobra'03]

You are mixing your scientific principles - adhesion on ice from a tire is a function of its chemical properties more than anything else - tire rubber can be made to be hydrophilic and adhesive to ice - siping has much more to do with moving water away from the tread patch, which obviously will improve traction on rain soaked roads, or watered ice.

Dry pavement is a different animal - here, it really comes down to a force over area equation - the more rubber, all things being equal, especially laterally, the less slippage, and the more grip, and most effective braking force. Weight is not an issue in roadholding, except if the vehgicle were so heavy that its weight actually liquified ice by the thermal action of high pressure.

I did not buy the Cobra to compromise further its compromised tires by siping - but I do not drive my car all season - i have an AWS Outback for that.