I'm sorry to hear about that man, but be glad that you are not hurt. I actually had been running summer tires on my 01 Boxster all year long for 7 yrs up here in the Northeast, and never had any issues, but I was very careful to not push it when the weather was cold until the tires warmed up. Just last week, however, I decided to mount snow tires to my car because I recently started driving the car to work (before it was just a weekend car). I normally run 18 inch wheels, but had my old 17s around, so I bought these Hankook IceBear snow tires from Discount Tire for only $548 for the set of 4 tires, and had them mounted on my 17s:
http://www.discounttiredirect.com/direct/searchTireMatchingPairs.do?mps=-50&yr=2001&ar=40&rd=17&vid=011386&sw=true&cs=255
The first day I put the snow tires on, my wife asks me to go out and pick up dinner, and so happens, it started to snow hard… so I took my car out for a test drive in the snow, and the tires were GREAT! On the snowy roads, I could accelerate briskly at 3/4 throttle in 1st gear (I only tested that with no other cars around me btw) without the rear tires letting go at all. I know it's too late to tell you this now, but for those looking for an economical snow tire combo, (although these winter tires are not Porsche approved), they are really pretty good.
Here's a pic I took while driving in the falling snow that day. The road was pretty bad, but the tires held the road great.
