The potential for tragedy is very real, as discussed in this thread where an RX-8 driver flipped the car after hitting ice and watched his friend in the passenger seat die: Wrecked RX-8

My buddy lost control of his car last month in a snow storm driving on the highway alongside a tractor trailer. He said it just stopped steering and turned under the tractor's rear wheel where he hit the tire of the truck and then bounced into a concrete barrier on the other side of the road. The car was totaled and he's lucky to be alive. Another friend was approaching a toll booth in a storm a few years back and suddenly found herself in a spin. She didn't hit anything but ended up facing three on-coming lanes of highway traffic. I suspect both were driving "all season" tires.

All season tires seem to do just fine until the point when the traction goes and then all hell breaks lose. If you drive on them, you need to be very pro-active in thinking about what's under your wheels. As Gordon's been saying for a long time now, they're better than nothing, but not true winter tires.

All car manufacturers should have a duty to deliver vehicles that are "reasonably" safe to be driven in the climates where they are sold, or make a prominant disclosures indicating otherwise. Mazda and the other sports car manufacturers aren't doing this. It allowed my salesman to tell me DSC was a good substitution for winter tires.

I know people are down on the plaintiff's lawyers, but in the U.S. there is no duty on consumers to "educate themselves." The duty is placed on manufacturers to deliver safe products for the public in the way the public is likely to use the product, and the world is a safer place for that rule because the alternative is Darwinism. Actually, since people on bad rubber are driving on public roads and carrying passengers, it's worse than Darwinism.

 

None of the dealers I visited knew anything about the winter tires issue. It's ok for a performance car to be fit with performance tires but Mazda should at least make sure dealers are educated and do not mislead customers, especially where snow is a problem.
After I made a big deal out of this with the dealer I bought from, they claim they have now started to warn RX8 customers.

 

FWIW, all 350Zs come w/Potenza RE040s as well. It's been stated MANY times on my350.com that one shouldn't even dare driving in the snow w/those. I'm sure it's been stated here a bunch too.

When it snowed here or was cold enough too, I left my Z parked and drove my 02 Maxima instead. The Goodyear Eagle RS-As on it at least have non-zero snow performance and the car is FWD.