Contrary to popular opinion, the additional safety offered by winter tyres is not expensive. The costs work out at 20 eurocents per day of use under winter conditions.

The costs for the additional purchase of winter tyres on steel rims were compared with all-year-round use of summer tyres, taking into account tyre prices, fitting and balancing of the winter tyres, plus the switch to summer tyres in the spring and winter tyres in the autumn.

At Semperit they based their calculations on a service life of four years for the winter tyres, whilst annual mileage of the car was estimated at a realistic 15,000 kilometres (9,321 miles).

Usage of the respective tyres was set at 6 months, and this included a new set of summer tyres after 30,000 kilometres (18,642 miles).