Bad tyres not being hit with enough penalty points

Continental, the tyre company, has criticised the lack of penalty points being handed out to drivers with defective tyres, saying that the levels of points levied is far lower than for mobile phone use, in spite of the enormous dangers of driving on worn or damaged tyres.

Last year, the Government and the Road Safety Authority introduced a selection of penalty points offences for having bald, defective, or damaged tyres on your cars. The move was clearly aimed at successive generations of Irish drivers who, in spite of so many warnings, continue to ignore their tyres, neglecting to inspect, inflate, or replace them.

One year on, according to Continental, just 853 penalty points notices for tyre-related offences have been issued, compared to 28,000 for mobile phone use in the same period.

Commenting on the figures, Tom Dennigan of Continental Tyres Ireland, said: "In common with road safety campaigners across the country, we welcomed the introduction in May last year by the then Minister for Transport of the new tyre safety penalty point regime. However, with only a total of 853 notices issued for tyre offences in that year, we have to say that we are very disappointed with the extremely low level of enforcement in this regard. When you consider that a vehicle's tyres are the only contact point with the road, their importance to overall road safety can not be overestimated.

“We can all see that mobile phone use behind the wheel is very widespread and we rightly welcome the Garda’s focus on enforcement in this area, but equally, our own analysis of replacement tyres at tyre depots around the country has shown that vehicles running on dangerous or illegal tyres are extremely common. We would therefore have expected the number of tyre-related penalty point notices to be much higher than the recorded figure.”

Last year, working with Advanced Pitstop tyre outlets, Continental surveyed tyres being removed from cars at replacement time, and found that an uncomfortably large number were damaged, unevenly worn, or worn down below the minimum 1.6mm tread depth. Many were sufficiently worn down enough for the wire carcass of the tyre to show through. Although specific figures or percentages for these tyres were not made available, Justin Glynn, branch manager of the Advance Pitstop outlet in Dundrum, Co Dublin, who provided tyres for analysis as part of this campaign, told The Irish Times, "I regularly see tyres like this on vehicles coming in to our depot and in many cases the owner is totally oblivious either to the condition of the tyres or to the potential impact they could have on the safety of their family, who may even be in the vehicle with them in the depot."

Given that it would be unfair to exert more pressure on an already-overstretched Garda Traffic Corps to spend more time inspecting tyres at checkpoints, Mr Dennigan is calling, once again, on Irish motorists to pay more attention to their tyres. “Even to the untrained eye, the faults on the tyres we inspected in our survey were immediately apparent but the only way we can tackle this problem is with more stringent enforcement of the new regulations. We fully support the Garda in their work aimed at keeping our roads safe and we understand the serious manpower challenges that the force faces in doing their day-to-day work. However, we are not calling for a whole new programme of roadside checks aimed at tyre safety. We would suggest that a vehicle’s tyres could be easily and quickly checked by a Garda when checking for perhaps, road tax / insurance or indeed, breathalyser tests for alcohol or other drugs. Our sole motivation is to ensure the worst examples of bad tyres that we uncovered are kept off our roads, that would be a huge boost to road safety across the country,” he said. “We can’t put all of the onus on the Garda, it is the responsibility of every motorist to ensure their vehicle is roadworthy and safe, and the condition of a vehicle’s tyres are hugely important in this regard. Motorists should carry out regular checks of their tyres, looking out for any damage, cuts or bulges. If any of the tyres are showing signs of damage, the motorist should waste no time in having them checked out by a competent tyre fitter.”

However, there is some confusion in tyre safety terms at the moment, as rival tyre maker Michelin has recently reiterated its advice that motorists should ignore warnings to change their tyres when they're worn down to 3mm tread depth, saying that its costs European motorists as much as €6.9 billion extra per year, as well as contributing to landfill and recycling costs.

A spokesperson for Michelin said, “Tyres do not perform the same when new – and as a tyre wears, and the tread depth reduces, the difference in performance will change, and differences may be accentuated. This is because tyre performance is affected by many individual characteristics; casing design, materials used, rubber compounds, tread design, shape of grooves and sipes, etc. Modern tyre technology makes it possible to provide high levels of performance and grip from new, and through all of the tyre’s life down to the legal tread wear limit. With this in mind, changing tyres early, before they are fully worn, does not guarantee greater safety, and no current studies have established a direct link between accident levels and tyre tread depth. Suggesting that tyres need to be changed early, before the legal limit or tread wear indicator is reached, is akin to enforcing a form of planned obsolescence.

"Changing tyres too early would result in 128 million additional tyres being used a year in Europe – which would cause nine million tons of additional Co2 emissions every year. In addition to the environmental impact, replacing tyres before they are fully worn also represents a significant and unjustified increase in costs for consumers; Ernst and Young estimates an extra €6 billion in Europe alone."

With conflicting advice like that, no wonder so many motorists tend to ignore their tyres and carry on, regardless.