Snow tires makes more of a difference than being FWD or RWD in heavy conditions is the real truth here.
A FWD with snow tires or chains will almost certainly have better snow/ice handling than a RWD with snow tires or chains, by the simple virtue of the drive axle being steerable.
If you've played Kerbal Space Program or a similar spaceflight simulator + rocket designer, then the reasoning here should be pretty intuitive: if you can only apply thrust to the reverse, and don't have reaction wheels, then in space you have no ability to steer under your own control. You need to be able to point thrust to the sides if you want to be able to turn (or stop turning).
Same deal on an icy road. RWD means all your thrust is pointed backwards; FWD means you can point your thrust to the sides and control your car's orientation. Having both FWD and RWD (i.e. AWD or 4WD) is even better; sure, it constrains the overall thrust angles, but you also get more of it - which means better control when you're driving on a surface that ain't flat.
This ain't just theoretical; it's something I've repeatedly observed every winter here in the Reno/Tahoe area.
Is that a virtue? it makes steering tougher.
The actual virtue is the weight of the motor over the front wheels (coefficient of friction * basically weight above tires)
Not in my experience it doesn't. In icy or otherwise low-friction conditions, the steerable wheels being powered makes correcting for understeer and oversteer much easier than if they're unpowered - specifically because, per above, you can readily accelerate in directions other than forward/reverse, allowing you to orient the car even when sliding out. You can't rely on the tires' lateral friction to help you steer; a tire at an angle on ice will just slide with the rest of the car, and needs to be spinning to apply any force on said car other than forward.
The catch, though, is that you have to be willing to accelerate at the very moment your brain would otherwise panic and tell your feet to hit the brakes. Hitting the brakes will make things considerably worse by stopping the spin on your tires (especially the fronts, which are the very tires for which spinning is absolutely essential for steering control).
(In snow, this is a little bit less severe; the deeper the snow, the more pushback on the sides of the steering tires when at an angle, which helps a little bit with steering - but not nearly as much as on a dry road, thus still necessitating being able to accelerate with those tires)
> The actual virtue is the weight of the motor over the front wheels (coefficient of friction * basically weight above tires)
This also helps, but not nearly as much as the front wheels being able to accelerate in the direction they're pointed.
Snow tires are essential. I went out one day on Dec 31 without snows and made it about 300 feet from my driveway before I went in the ditch and rolled my car.
Circa 2008 I drove a FR Buick for a few weeks that had traction control and I was impressed with how it handled in the snow.
FR is front engine, rear wheel drive
The engine can be placed front (in front of the front axle), mid-engine (between the axles), or rear over/behind the rear axle.
It affects weight distribution and therefore the vehicle’s handling.
And snow tires is what makes a difference, true, but you can mount them on any car and same thing for traction control. So a same age AWD with snow tires drives better than a RWD with snow tires, specially if you come from a stop on an upwards icy road.
AWD is better than FWD or RWD, yes, but driving in the winter without snow tires.
AWD matters exactly 0 when emergency braking and little as long as you aren't driving flat and not accelerating.
Snow tyres help when accelerating, braking, driving straight forward and through curves, uphill and downhill.
There is a reason why snow tires are mandatory here and AWD is not.
Correct. All cars, whether they are FWD, RWD, or AWD are All-Wheel-Brake. The most important aspect of stopping safely are your tires.
Yeah. They do.
I've driven pretty much every combination of FWD, RWD, 4WD, and AWD, with and without snow tires, in a variety of winter conditions. The "other tires" were regular all seasons, not high performance summer tires or anything.
RWD with all seasons is really bad in snow, and mine generally didn't leave the parking lot in winter, because it simply couldn't. When you can start it, put it in reverse, let the clutch out, get out, and watch a wheel turning without the car having moved an inch, it's not a good day to take that car.
FWD with all seasons is better, because there's typically more weight over the drive wheels, but they're not great in snow.
4WD/AWD with all seasons (I lump them together because while there are some differences, it doesn't matter in typical snow) is far better, and hysterically fun to drive (drift all the wide corners), but it's still somewhat tricky in snow. And, yes, you do get better braking with 4WD, because the front brakes slow the rear wheels too (most of the braking force is on the front wheels, especially at initial application). The catch is that when you lock the wheels, you lock all four and have zero guidance, vs just locking the front and at least continuing mostly straight (or, usually, whatever the local downhill is).
FWD or RWD with snow tires is, by far, better than AWD with all seasons.
And then AWD/4WD with snow tires is just a case of "What snow?"
Why is it so hard to believe that a product that advertises 30-50% improvement in traction results in a lesser improvement than doubling the area over which tractive force is applied?
I used to drink the snow tire kool-aid until I bought a set for the FWD car of and realized that better straight line stopping distance and cornering ability don't actually help you because being able to controllably put power to the ground is still the bottleneck in the "is it reasonable to drive in these conditions" equation by a mile and while they help they are nowhere near a replacement for doubling the contact patch that force goes through.
Sure, they get me a little bit of margin to be an idiot and come into turns too hot or stop short but I wasn't really doing that stuff in the snow anyway so the benefit is lost on me (and people adapt their driving style to the performance they have available so how big is the benefit really?) and they still don't make the FWD car climb my damn street like the AWD car does so I don't buy them anymore. I keep chains in the trunk for the really bad days.
The FWD/RWD nit picking is mostly irrelevant IMO because any fundamental difference is far less than the vehicle to vehicle difference within or outside a given category. Better handling in the dry more or less directly leads to better handling of the same type in the snow. A RWD box truck will out hill climb a FWD minivan but the latter will out corner the former and a Miata and hot FWD hatch will be better than both at everything.
> better straight line stopping distance and cornering ability don't actually help you because being able to controllably put power to the ground is still the bottleneck in the "is it reasonable to drive in these conditions" equation
I take this to mean the answer is no. I drive in serious winter conditions, and AWD with winter tires is great, but it doesn't matter how many wheels are applying traction when you slide into a ditch.
The reduced ability to stop and turn has lead to in my snow driving experience, far, far fewer "that could have easily gone worse" situations than a lack of ability to gracefully put power to the ground.
I don't get why everyone obsesses over stopping and turning and shills snow tires. There's a reason that everyone and their brother buys an AWD vehicle and far fewer people buy snow tires. Everyone(TM) can't be wrong.
What I want you to tell me is why I should prioritize braking and steering if they're not the bottlenecks I encounter when driving in the snow.
Most accidents are caused by failure to stop and failure to turn, not failure to accelerate.
> There's a reason that everyone and their brother buys an AWD vehicle and far fewer people buy snow tires.
You clearly live in a very different place than me - very few passenger vehicles are available with AWD (subarus, trucks, some SUVs). But everyone has snow tires.
> What I want you to tell me is why I should prioritize braking and steering if they're not the bottlenecks I encounter when driving in the snow
Great for you? Again, you clearly live in a place with very different conditions than I do. What about the conditions make it so that you can't accelerate, but you can turn or brake just fine?
I regularly drive in conditions in my damned Camaro where the only other vehicles on the road are trucks, with some of them not being on the road anymore.
I agree that tread depth is massively important in the slushy conditions that commutes in the snow devolve into. You need that depth to provide a path for the "thick water" to GTFO so you're not hydroplaning on slush.