40 small accidents in my area recently, all on winter tyres, you still have to know what you are doing in the snow and ice, simple put, the Swiss drive too close together and are usually on the phone or texting, the police are very relaxed about that it seems. The vast majority of these were on sheet ice at low speed.
For those interested in how the CX5 drives in slippery surfaces, I went a trip to a shop today, driving around 45 mph on a main road, was fairly busy, road looked fine, hard packed snow with two dark strips of road about 1ft wide each to drive on, however, before a roundabout I had a feeling there was low grip, gave the brakes medium force and was surprised to find the ABS came on straight away and I didn't slow down at all, sheet ice. So I held back a little more from the car infront, slowed with ABS as I approached the roundabout, ABS came on no matter how gentle I pressed the pedal, I checked my rear view to see the two cars behind snaking around a lot but slowling at least.
On the way back I took a detour on a quiet road, was total white out, only marker poles to show where the road was, got up to 50mph and then foot hard on the brakes, was 1inch powder snow on top of solid ice, took forever to stop with ABS always on, also to note was the brake pedal doesn't go down very far no matter how hard you press when ABS is active, but below approx 10mph just before you come to a halt, the pedal sinks much further for some reason. Acceleration was exceptional on the ice but you need spikes for braking. TC (or TCS, can't remember what it's called in the CX5) off means you can spin the wheels if you are going in a straight line, the car will do a small oversteer if you power out a junction, which is fun but as soon as the angel gets a little more the esp activates, cutting the power and brakes the wheels to straighten you up, same if you do a handbrake turn on snow or ice, the esp freaks out so it's not worth trying.
To be honest, the CX5 has the advantage of ground clearance which helps on the very odd occasion, otherwise it's similar to any other AWD vehicle. I would love to be able to lock it to AWD, I would have preferred that it was always on, even if the fuel consumption was sacrificed a little. All the time I was playing around, I was trying to work out when the back wheels were driving, I don't know if they were working when going straight, or when the traction lost light flashes on the dash, maybe this light flashes to say the TC is active and the rear wheels are driving, certainly the small power slides were fun and controllable before ESP intervened so the rears drive was active then.
My wife really wanted a Scobby XV which I was happy with as it has one of the best AWD systems, but the ride comfort was shocking, it was as if it had springs, but no shocks on it, we both got out feeling travel sick, shame, I used to have a Impreza turbo and the donuts you could do in the snow were amazing!
