Encourage winter tire use

Six years after Quebec decided to mandate winter use by all motorists of tires built to provide traction in snow and ice, accident data prove that the move had paid off in fewer collisions, injuries and fatalities.

Yet here in Saskatchewan, where five months of icy and snowy weather is the annual norm, and where the number of winter automobile collisions climbed to 71,203 between Nov. 1, 2012, and April 12, 2013, up from 56,396 in a comparable period in 2011-12, the public auto insurer has no plans to consider mandating winter tire use.

Among reasons that SGI officials and politicians have cited over the years for not requiring all Saskatchewan drivers to use winter tires is the cost it would entail, the likelihood of a “pushback” from citizens who would see it as interference by government, and even the rationale that winter tires might give drivers a “false sense of security” that encourages them to drive faster.

Neighbouring Manitoba, which also has a compulsory basic auto insurer like SGI in Saskatchewan, this year introduced an incentive program that provides vehicle owners with four-year loans of up to $2,000 at prime plus two per cent to buy and install winter tires.

Again, SGI’s response is to say that it will be watching with interest to see if there will be a “reduction in claims coming out of Manitoba” — as if six years of data from Quebec have proven nothing.

Certainly, Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada that has made winter tires compulsory, although British Columbia mandates their use for motorists on certain mountain highways. Even though Saskatchewan’s winters are as bad or worse than in many provinces, motorists here are slow to adopt a technology with proven safety benefits, with only 39 per cent using the tires with superior cold weather traction.

Apart from Quebecers who have no choice in the matter, the Tire and Rubber Association of Canada says that 73 per cent of Maritime province drivers get shod for winter, as do 56 per cent of motorists in Ontario, 45 per cent of Albertans and 38 per cent of British Columbians.

Few of the reasons cited by motorists in Saskatchewan for not using winter tires actually hold much validity.

With the basic SGI deductible set at $700, a single collision avoided on an icy road can cover a good portion of the cost of a set of winter tires and steel rims to mount them. Besides, a set of winter tires lasts about six years and reduces the wear on the grossly misnamed “all seasons” for about five months each year, which means that the regular tires have to be replaced less often. And it’s simply untrue that allseason tires perform as well in snow and ice, or have similar stopping distances.

If SGI and the politicians who oversee the public insurer have no stomach for making winter tire use mandatory and want to avoid Manitoba’s model, a workable incentive might be a discount on insurance premiums for drivers who install winter tires. Anything that encourages winter tire use makes us all safer on Saskatchewan’s roads.

The editorials that appear in this space represent the opinion of The StarPhoenix. They are unsigned because they do not necessarily represent the personal views of the writers. The positions taken in the editorials are arrived at through discussion among the members of the newspaper’s editorial board, which operates independently from the news departments of the paper.