I TAKE BACK EVERYTHING I HAVE SAID IN THE PAST RE STUDDED TYRES NOT BEING NECESSARY!!!!
The snow in Southend was PERFECT. It started falling heavily mid afternoon, everybody panicked and left work, gridlock ensued. This meant that the snow turned to slush and then was compressed to ice instead of melting on the gritted roads
I left work after the worst of the gridlock was over (18:00). The first junction (approach to a roundabout) made me nearly poo myself; I'd approached the queue at normal speed, overtake it, then realise I was on white frozen slush and not the wet stuff I had been expecting. However no problems.
Trundling through the rest of the commute was ok. Main roads might have been wet/slush/frozen slush, I don't really know. What I do know though is that I had good traction and suspect that it'd have been worse on knobblies. Some uphill climbs I was doing ok, but each time a car tried to overtake me and accelerate they wheelspun.
The back roads though were sheet ice. You could see the zig-zag tracks from cars that were just wheelspinning on mild uphills when they had gone over a speed bump and were trying to get back up to speed. I managed some mild controlled wheelspins with heavy acceleration, but in the main just slogged home. At one junction I tried not to laugh - the pedestrian had got onto his hands and knees and was crawling across the road.
However, on one road I thought the studs had worn down at last
wheelspinning was easy. I had control of the steering but I could feel that the bike wanted to let go.
After a while of this I stopped and looked at the
studs screws. Not too worn. Then I looked at the road.
Even though I had good boots on, I couldn't stand up. The white "snow" was deep compacted ice. The black wheel tracks was that white compressed snow compressed even further into black ice.
I've taken some photos and will upload them later.
