The thin slits cut across the blocks of a tread pattern are called sipes, and they are the part doing most of the work when you brake on a wet road. The large grooves clear standing water. The sipes do something different: they create extra edges, and they let each block flex slightly so those edges bite into the film of water left behind. A tyre with plenty of well designed siping stops noticeably shorter in the wet than one with a simpler, blockier pattern, and the difference is largest at low speed on a poor surface, which is most of the driving around here.
It also explains why tyres get worse in the wet long before they are worn out. Sipes are cut to a depth, and as the tread wears they get shorter and eventually disappear, taking their biting edges with them. So a tyre with a good wet reputation when new can be quite ordinary at half tread if the siping was shallow. When we go through the options with you, that is one of the things worth asking about, particularly for a car that has to brake down Highgate Hill in the rain most days.
Four seasons is a compromise, summer rubber is a commitment and winter tyres are a plan. Which of the three suits depends on where the car actually goes, and a car that spends its life on Holloway Road A1 has different needs from one doing two miles at a time. Tight in Whitehall Park, easy in Hargrave Park: neither stops the job. Level in St John's Way, sloping in Highgate Hill foot: we set the car straight first.
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Everything in Archway is either climbing or descending, and Highgate Hill in the rain is the local test of whether a set of tyres was worth what was paid for it. Braking downhill on a wet, patched surface is exactly the condition where the fine detail in a tread pattern earns its money and where a cheap tyre feels cheap. That is worth bearing in mind when the choice is being made, because a hill does not care what the sidewall says.
A driver in Whitehall Park had been unhappy braking downhill in the wet on a pattern with very little siping. The replacement set changed how the car felt on the first wet morning.
A car near Hargrave Park had tyres that were fine when new and unconvincing at 4mm. The siping had worn away and taken the biting edges with it.
Four tyres changed at the kerb on a narrow street with the car left in the space it had been sitting in.
The thin slits cut across the tread blocks. They create extra edges that bite into the thin film of water the main grooves cannot clear, and they let each block flex so those edges make contact. They are most of what a tyre uses to stop on a wet road.
Because sipes are only cut to a certain depth. As the tread wears they get shallower and eventually vanish, so the tyre loses its biting edges long before it reaches the legal limit. The grooves are still there. The fine detail is not.
Not in the wet on a road, no. Big blocks and deep grooves look purposeful and are designed for loose surfaces. On tarmac in the rain it is the number and quality of the edges that decide how quickly you stop.
Yes, and it is worth saying what the car actually does. A car braking down a long gradient in the wet most days wants different priorities from one doing motorway miles, and we would put the money into wet braking rather than anything else.
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