My plan is to try out the KO2s and see how they do; I've never run them so I can't speak to their winter performance. I'm about a thousand kilometers into a set of Motomaster-brand tires, available exclusively here in Canada at Canadian Tire (it sounds like just a tire shop but it's so much more; kind of a national icon. If you need paper towel, home decor, tools, tires, and food - you can get all of them at a Canadian Tire and they even used to have their own currency that was accepted at other stores across Canada -- but I digress). These Motomasters are made by cooper, so the quality is good, and they are robust 10-ply off road tires like the KO2s, but so far I've been really impressed with their cold weather/ice and snow performance.
But I'll also add, I've never run snow tires at all, and have spent about 25-ish years driving in Canada on ice and snow; I grew up in a place where driving across a lake in winter was the only way to access civilization for some folks, and regularly visit my parents by driving from Alberta/BC to Northern Ontario in December and back in January in addition to daily driving all winter long on both short and long trips; I'd rate my winter driving experience in passenger vehicles as quite high.
Winter Tires are, undoubtedly, safer. My choice to never run them has more to do with financial priorities then anything else; I treat that investment as "discretionary spending" and I use my discretionary income in other ways, but I will be the first to state this is a stupid way to do it -- winter tires are WAY better than all-seasons in the snow and ice. If a person lives in winter conditions they should not be looked upon as optional, and the easiest way to use them (and get longevity out of the tires) is to toss them on a second set of steel rims. As Hurricane and other BC folks will know, there are some highways here that you legally aren't allowed to drive on without snow tires and/or chains, so in some cases it's not optional, and it's not "Big Tire" lobbyists influencing the government negatively -- it truly is that much safer and better. Someday I will listen to myself and invest - sooner rather than later now that there's a little one on my trips with me.
All that being said, there's an expression about driving a 4x4 -- When you do the math, it means you will get 16x further into the mudpit before you get stuck as compared to a 2-wheel drive vehicle. The sentiment is that sometimes mechanical advantages like 4x4, winter tires, etc. results in overconfidence. Studded tires and winter tires in general can REALLY do this. They allow you to drive much more "normally" in adverse conditions, and what that means is your vehicle is travelling with a lot more speed -- energy -- because of your improved traction. But even winter and studs have a limit, and when you hit that limit at those higher speeds in an unrecoverable way, you are in even more trouble. My point here is -- regardless of the rubber, snow and ice and winter driving means one thing above all else: Slow down.
