[jyl]

The way I think of it is, if the car's dry weather braking/turning ability is "10", and on snow/ice with regular tires is "1-2", studless snows give you "4-5". So a curve you'd take at 40 mph in the summer, you might take at 15-20 mph with studless snow tires on snow/ice, whereas with regular tires even 10 mph would see you sliding off the shoulder.

That's with the conditions we get in the PacNW lowlands - snow that comes down wet and either freezes to sheet ice or melts to snot-slippery slush, or the worst which is a thin layer of slush over sheet ice, stuff you can hardly even walk on.

There's been times here when it was much safer to carefully drive three blocks on AWD/snows than to try to walk it.