I remember when I was driving my last Civic, the '97 LX, before we put new tires on it. It was raining so the roads were slick, and I saw that a Firetruck was pulling out of a Fire station and thus traffic was stopped. No problem, I had hundreds of feet! Yeah right... hit the brakes and SHHHHHH... the car skid for a long time and judging by the distance I knew I was going to hit this old blue Accord that was in front of me, so I let off the brakes and reapplied them, which stopped me. The thing that was funny was that I was going the speed limit and had so much time to stop, and was barely able to stop. After that, my dad bought me four new tires, "Prime Well" brand, real cheap, but man, those were awesome tires and they performed extremely well in the rain. I remember messing around in the rain once I got the new tires to test them out and I was pleasantly surprised... I'd highly recommend those tires to anyone looking for a good, cheap tire.
Now that car was totaled, so I have a '98 DX with new tires that my dad also bought and these are Firestone FR380's, and they're far better than the cheap, dead ones that came with the car when we bought it that skid all the time. They're supposed to have a better grip on the road in the weather than the Primewell's but that's actually not true. They are, however, much, much quieter and get better mileage than the old ones, and I feel extremely safe when driving with them because even when I do hydroplane or skid, they stay perfectly straight...unbelievable, my car has never fishtailed or anything of the sort with these tires.
I hope this thread convinces some people to buy new tires. You can be the best runner but if you have bowling shoes on, you'll suck. Same thing with cars.