Random thought: does anyone have any guesses about what percentage of the population in Calgary actually use winter tires?
Obviously, you can get a good estimate by looking for steel wheels, but some people have a second set of alloys, hubcaps, or even re-mount their winters to their regular set of wheels. For winter, I have steelies on one car and alloys on the other.
It just seems like the idea of winter tires is a very polarizing topic. Those who use them swear by them. Those that don't use them think that they're unnecessary. When I was in Sweden (just the Stockholm area) in March a couple of years ago, it seemed that every car had winter tires, and most of them had studded tires (although studded tires are probably overkill for Calgary's climate and, IIRC, illegal). Despite also being a "northern" country, it seems that here we tend to use all-seasons and then complain that the roads are bad instead of being more proactive about winter driving.
I'm just not sure whether it is a cultural thing, a regional thing to this part of Canada (maybe Manitobans take winter more seriously, for example), etc. I'm seriously not trying to make this a winter tires vs. all seasons debate, but I am genuinely curious about how drivers in other winter regions prepare themselves.
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