How fast can you drive with snow chains? This question is asked often. And the answer depends on a few factors. Foremost among them? The kind of snow chains you’re using, your tire size, and your driving skills.
With proper care and maintenance, your car’s brakes and tires should be good for braking to about .6g (60% to 80% of maximum possible braking force), but not much more than that.
Braking performance depends largely on tire size. Smaller tires have less traction to work with under load than larger tires, so smaller tires create more heat when applied for a given length of time.
If you press the brake pedal for too long, you simply exceed the tire’s capacity to convert heat into work, and the tire heats up too fast. When that happens, the tire softens and its rolling resistance goes up dramatically.
This is why people often add snow tires on their cars for winter driving—they’re designed to create less heat than standard all-season tires.
If you use snow chains on your vehicle’s full-size wheels, chances are they’re going to hold you back from reaching your car’s top possible speed unless conditions are perfect. The factor here that goes against high speed is traction—creating enough of it is tough on a chain used at highway speeds.
What Are Snow Chains
Snow chains or tire chains, also called tire cables or cable chains, are used to give tires the extra traction they need on snow and ice. They’re either made of steel cables with hooks on the ends or flexible steel lattices with more hooks.
The purpose of snow chains is to make it possible for drivers to drive in conditions too treacherous for normal tires—and that usually means icy or snowy roads.
Chains can be put on any vehicle with pneumatic tires, from sleds and old-fashioned horse-drawn carriages up to SUV’s and heavy trucks. Trailers used for hauling have their own traction devices as well—skid shoes and cleats.
When should you put on snow chains?
So when should you put on snow chains? Any time you’re traveling at a speed well below that at which your vehicle will be stalling. If you’re driving 30 mph, your tires just won’t be able to create enough friction to keep the car moving forward.
To maintain a steady speed of 30 mph or more, the tires need to be able to do at least 1.5g of braking force—which most passenger cars can’t do without seriously overheating their brakes and tires if the roads are slippery.
If you put snow chains on at highway speeds (more than 35 mph), expect to have lower acceleration and top speeds with them than without them, depending on road conditions, tire quality, and various other factors.
If you put on chains at high speeds, then you’ll have to ease up on your throttle and try to keep the car from slipping too badly. In ideal conditions, it is possible for experienced drivers to safely drive at highway speeds with snow chains.
However, if there’s a strong crosswind or snowy conditions that are less than ideal, it’s better to keep the car moving at 25 mph or lower.
If your tires become soft due to a sudden drop in stopping power (it happens more often than you think), don’t panic; put on the next size smaller chains and continue driving slowly till you’ve reached either safety or an area that can let you step out and look at the problem.
Do Snow Chains Affect Driving Speed?
Snow chains affect speed in several ways. First, they increase your stopping distance. They’re not nearly as good a break as regular tires with good braking surfaces, so you’ll need to give more space between you and the car ahead of you.
The difference can be dramatic depending on how slippery the conditions are; for example, at highway speeds (55 mph or greater), you may need to give as much as twice the distance you’d normally give.
Second, snow chains reduce your traction. This will slow down your acceleration and top speed. On dry pavement, every 1-inch snowflake that lands on your tire’s surface have about 12 pounds of weight per square inch (PSI).
On wet pavement, the weight of a lump of water at any one point is about 1 PSI. The same lump on a frozen surface weighs 300 PSIs—about 60 times as much. That can make driving on snow- or ice-covered roads slippery, no matter what kind of tires you’re using.
Third, snow chains wear out your tires sooner than they would without the chains. The combination of all these factors can reduce your speed by 30% to 50% below what it would be without chains—and that’s assuming conditions are fairly good and you have some experience driving with chains before.
You might need to limit yourself to just around 30 mph if you’re inexperienced. You’ll probably want to drive more slowly than that even if you’ve got experience using chains.
The manual that came with the chains recommends driving at less than half of your speed without chains for the same sections of road.
For example, if you regularly drive 40 mph without snow chains, driving 25 or 30 mph should be plenty fast enough with them! Some people find that driving slower than that is easier on their nerves—especially inexperienced drivers or those who aren’t used to driving on snowy roads in the first place. However, winter tires help you stay safe while reducing your stopping distance and increasing your vehicle’s traction, allowing for faster speeds.
How fast can you drive with snow chains?
You should reduce your speed. Chains don’t give you a lot of extra traction, so they won’t help a car to go faster on ice or snow. However, they do help a car to stop in icy conditions, and that’s what matters most. You can drive at the maximum speed permitted by the road conditions (if it’s 30 mph or less), but be prepared to slow down if you’re going too fast for the weather conditions.
There are three reasons why you should drive slower with snow chains on
- Chains can’t give you much extra traction, so you can’t accelerate easily in slippery conditions.
- If your car hydroplanes or skids on ice, it’s going to take longer to regain control of the vehicle at slower speeds.
- If you lock your brakes or skid in icy conditions, the snow chains could cause serious damage to your tires or wheels.
Here’s what you can do to drive with snow chains safely:
- Slow down and reduce your speed when driving on snow- or ice-covered roads.
- Remember that braking distance will be longer in slippery conditions. Make sure you slow down before starting downhill, or when approaching corners or intersections, for example
- If you’re not really familiar with the specific car and its behavior on slippery surfaces, let someone else who does know drive the vehicle in these conditions instead (i.e. player 1’s cards are white and 2’s are black).
Is It a Good Idea to always use Tire Cables?
Any time you’re traveling at a speed well below that at which your vehicle will be stalling. If you’re driving 30 mph, your tires just won’t be able to create enough friction to keep the car moving forward.
To maintain a steady speed of 30 mph or more, the tires need to be able to do at least 1.5g of braking force—which most passenger cars can’t do without seriously overheating their brakes and tires if the roads are slippery.
If you put snow chains on at highway speeds (more than 55 mph), expect to have lower acceleration and top speeds with them than without them, depending on road conditions, tire quality, and various other factors.
If you put on chains at high speeds, then you’ll have to ease up on your throttle and try to keep the car from slipping too badly.
In ideal conditions, it is possible for experienced drivers to safely drive at highway speeds with snow chains. However, if there’s a strong crosswind or snowy conditions are less than ideal, it’s better to keep the car moving at 25 mph or lower.
If your tires become soft due to a sudden drop in stopping power (it happens more often than you think), don’t panic; put on the next size smaller chains and continue driving slowly till you’ve reached either safety or an area that can let you step out and look at the problem.
Do chains ruin your tires?
It’s been said that snow chains can ruin your tires—that the tires on the outside of a turn will wear out much faster if you’re using chains. The same thing has been said about regular all-season tires, but it just isn’t true.
In both cases, the reason given for this is that the traction forces are concentrated to one side of the tire’s surface and wear it out more quickly.
However, wheel alignment plays a much bigger role in tire wear than whether or not you’re using snow chains. In fact, if you were to mount your tires perfectly and don’t let them go out of alignment while driving with snow chains, then they’ll probably last longer than normal for any given set of winter tires.
Do you put snow chains on all 4 tires?
The reason for putting snow chains on all 4 tires is that it evens out the load on each tire. This allows each wheel to carry its share of the weight of the vehicle so that every tire wears evenly.
Without chains, the tires have to carry a greater load than they’re rated for, and they wear out faster as a result—particularly at higher speeds.
If there are 4 or more snowflakes per square inch (12 per sq. cm.) on your tires, it’s best to put on all 4 chains; otherwise, you’re better off putting them only on the rear 2 or only in front 2 wheels if there are less than 12 snowflakes per square inch (60 per sq. cm.).
when to use snow chains
Some states have laws requiring snow chains or traction devices to be used under poor road conditions. Look for signs that say, “Carry chains or traction devices” or, “Use tire chains,” wherever you happen to be driving in the winter. The most important issue is always safety.
The weather may not seem too bad when you set out in the morning, but icy patches can develop unexpectedly on roads during the course of your drive. You can’t tell what condition the roads are in until you get there—and then it might be too late to turn back.
Robert Anderson is a world class motorhead who rebuilt his first carb at age 10, his first engine at age 15, and completed his first full hotrod build when he was just 18! Previously, he has ran a part warehouse, delivered pizzas, and managed the service department for a $20 million/year revenue dealership. Robert knows cars like few others and he is passionate about sharing his knowledge.