Do directional tires cause accidents if mounted backwards?

Answer 1

Directional tires can cause unpredictable behaviour. Good acceleration but poor stopping in some conditions, I have been using directional tires for 50 years and they have advantages and disadvantages. This was posted and explains some.

"By the way, the reason - the only reason - the military changed to the non-directional tires was that they were NOT DIRECTIONAL. Some of you use a farm tractor or know someone who does. You know it's possible to drive a tractor into situations where it cannot back out. Depending on the individual manufacturers, most DIRECTIONAL tractor tires are 30% to 40% more effective than a non-directional tire going forward and about the same amount LESS effective than a non-directional in reverse. The drill on mounting directional tires on military vehicles was to mount the front tires "backwards" for more traction in reverse. The thinking was that the driver could back out of a bad situation and the directional tire would benefit from the engine weight. Changing to the spare and normal tire replacement could result in having most or all the tires turning "backward" at lower traction. The only way to have the various tires all turning the best way would have required constantly remounting the tires on the rims to suit their location on the vehicles."