Fine for bald tyres!!?

I come from a background in motorcycles where tyre condition is far more important :JPS:
There seems an easy solution to all of this - don't use bald tyres
You know the law - get caught with fecked tyres and you'll pay for it.
If you can't do the time...

FWIW Graham,
I expect everyone knows a bald tyre("and I doubt if we were talking about literally bald") offers better grip in the dry than a treaded tyre (all things such as construction,profile and compound being equal).
The problem comes when 'our' weather decides to change - you're 200 miles from home,driving on superior bald tyres and the heavens open - what then?You carry 4 treaded tyres 'just in case' ?
Hardly likely.
A bald tyre actually offers MORE grip in the wet than a treaded tyre.......up until the point aquaplaning occurs.At this point the bald tyre will offer around 0% of the grip the treaded tyre offers.

I just hope that you aren't behind me when it decides to rain and you're using bald tyres to save a few bob.

As far as 'driving like a knob' is concerned - I agree but that perfectly describes a driver on in-adequate tyres in my opinion.

'Patronizing petrolheads'?
Give me them over cheap + dangerous skin-flints any day mate.

 

I think that the £2.5k per tyre is a maximum fine...
Unlikely you'd get fined that unless you were a persistant offender, and the tyres were shown to have caused an accident.
BTW, I use Pirelli P6000s on the car, Goodyear Wrangler on the Landie and Metzeler Laser ME33/99s on the bike.. I check them every week, but still think that not enough emphasis is placed on other roadworthiness-aspects of driving - frinstance brake pads, engine/gearbox oil etc. All of those can easily cause an accident, but the thing that causes most accidents is crappy driving, or inappropriate speed.
Speed only kills if you're doing the wrong speed for the conditions, not if you're a decent driver doing 140mph on the empty motorway at 2am, but doing 70mph while 6 feet from somebody's bumper in thick fog on the M25...
That's where the police should concentrate their efforts, IMHO.

 

Listening to radio four a few weeks back a policeman was bemoaning the lack of grip afforded by certain types of motorway surface. Apparently to save costs a different top coat is applied to the road that can increase your stopping distance by up to three times. A number of quite serious accidents have resulted from it. It's banned in much of Europe but unsurprisingly common in the UK.
I still can't fathom why the law was changed from 1.5mm to 3mm or whatever it is, seems a very commercial decision to me.
I think tyre compound is absolutely key to grip, certainly the Bridgestones on my Type R did not inspire confidence in the wet in the same way the the Yokohamas I used to use did. I'd still say your a berk if you try to eek out the last mile!

 

Well I may be behind you on a bicycle with 23mm wide semicircular tyres, but somehow we manage to get from a to b - until a motorist hits us.

I doubt an insurance company accepts that a bald tyre grips in the dry. If the fuzz investigated a bump in which you had illegal tyres, all insurance bets would be off - even if it was in the dry, in which you agree 'illlegal' tyres would in fact be a safer option!

If the driving conditions become dangerous, my advice would be to go slower.

As to the original point which is not 'should you break the law' - it was '2.5k is a silly amount' I still think so.

 

Are you deliberately missing the point?
All bets are off?
Void insurance?
Re-read my post.
I'll give you a clue - use bald tyres if you're foolish.

Either way,£2.5K seems fair.
Perhaps this is what it takes to make some people see sense

 

I saw a TV program that mentioned this within the last few months. The article was about how dangerous some roads where , i think it was somewhere in East Anglia, maybe Lincolnshire where they have the big dykes. It was to do with the lack of grip on certain corners and the huge number of fatal accidents that could be easily prevented, just by the local council applying a grippier road surface.
Memory is a little faded but i think the issue was motorists driving along raised road surfaces in straight lines for mile upon mile, in a featureless landscape ( so must be Lincolnshire ) , then having to negotiate a ****ty bend on slippery tarmac.
something like that....

 

That's all very well, but the thing that's going to make people cynical about such huge fines for bald tyres is that (as has been said already) there are many ways in which your car can be allowed to become more dangerous than the ideal, why have bald tyres been singled out for such large fines? One can only assume that it's because it's easy for the police to check them, whereas checking the condition of shocks, brake cables/pads/pipes/cylinders, windscreen wipers/washers, etc etc is going to take too long and cannot necessarily be easily carried out at the side of the road by a cop....

Are you serious? Whatever you like to believe, it doesn't matter how new or expensive your tyres are, if you deliberately and consciously drive like a tit then you're a million times worse than someone who has allowed their tyres to slip below the legal limit probably because they haven't thought to check them. I think you'll find that 90% of the population use the MOT test to tell them what needs replacing, unless a fault or wear becomes really obvious or component fails completely in the meantime. Perhaps this is bad, but it's true.

Don't get me wrong, everyone knows that a well maintained car is a good thing, obviously including the tyres, but a realistic balance is required I reckon.

 

Y'all should try my Landy for poor grip... It's got reasonably road-biased tyres on it, all with no more than 1000 miles on them, and it slides quite excitingly on any sharp bend at speeds I could safely double in my Octavia...
And it just happens that I see that as a bit of a safety feature.
The reason is, that with a high vehicle like the Landy, if there was too much grip it would roll (like Range Rovers, or many other 4wds do if driven "enthusiastically") - this added safety is all because of the leaf springs that are laughingly called "suspension"..
I'd take slight discomfort over a broken neck, any day!

 

La Toilette,
You may be interested to know that tyres are the final connection between your car and the road. This means that if you're tyres are shot then the state of anything 'upstream' isn't going to be of much help - surely you can see that?
Cynical? hardly...

With the possible exception of brake pads, everything else on your list is easily checked too - the Police have clampdowns every now and then for Taxi's, coaches etc that do just such a thing.

You read too much into my flippant statement re: petrol heads - well done
90% wait until an MOT to realise they could be driving dangerously? I hope you can provide proof or is this just a poll you carried out on a Tube train, on the back of a ticket?
The whole point may well have passed you by.
If it takes the threat of a £2500 fine to make the ignorant check their tyres, rather than rely on an MOT then I'm all for it.
Think of it as a deterrent
Ignorance is no defence BTW...

Do you have bald tyres?
Yes? Get them changed - you could save £2500, less the cost of the tyres.
No? Well done - you have nothing to worry about.

 

Precisely. Stop whinging, the lot of you. Think yourselves lucky you can drive at all - some of us will never be able to.

Having said that, as others have said, singling out bald tires over, say, duff brake pads seems a bit biased.

While on the subject of law/driving - can anyone tell me why a convicted drink driver should EVER have the right to have their licence back?

 

Nope.

 

Couldn't agree more. And why do we have to assume that all petrolheads drive like idiots?

 

I think it's a question of degree...
A m8 of mine, who's an alcoholic, always drove drunk, without seatbelts and he always drove like an eejit. He rolled a car outside the town hall in Swansea and broke his neck.. He got a year ban, despite being 5x the limit.
My dad, many years ago, was done for being 2 points over the limit, in a country area. He also got a 1 year ban.
He's never drunk any alcohol and driven since, but my foolish m8 will no doubt continue with his drink-driving.
So should they both be treated the same?
Seems to me there's a lot of rabidness, and not enough thought about the issue - similarly it's almost impossible to have a sensible and reasoned debate about paedophilia: if you don't say "hang 'em!" you're an apologist...

 

Many thanks.
I do try to simplyfy things for the hard of thinking/plainly argumentative.

Not really?
Yes/no please.
What i'm saying is bald tyres are dangerous.
Everything else being in tip-top condition will not change that fact.
Everything else being knackered adds to the problem.
Simple,when you think about it.

Leonard has added an interesting point.
Following your train of thought,would you agree that drink/driving is accetable if you take that into account while driving?
6 pints = 30mph max?
Add a pint/short = decrease in speed of 5 mph?
Stupid notion I think you'll agree.
Yet you argue it is acceptable on dangerous and illegal tyres.
You're strange,mate

I'm not the C.P.S.
I'm just shedding light on the fact that made up statistics mean absolutely F.A.
They help no one.
Least of all,you

Good,then you'll not be worried about a £2500 fine will you?
As you're probably aware,it's the drivers responsibilty to check road-worthiness of their vehicle.
Obviously,if you're not up to the task find a local mechanic to check them out for you.
Again,you could be saving a fortune.

 

'WE' don't.
Others,fighting a loosing battle,do.
HTH

 

Legzr1, please calm down. I actually deleted the post you quoted me from most recently as I could see that I had taken your previous bait, and things were sliding downhill. Unfortunately you got to it first and clearly you still want to continue a pointless exchange. Well, go fight with somebody else, as you're spoiling my day (this is supposed to be 'chat', not a 'battle' as you see it). Why are you so angry? Is it so unforgiveable for someone not to agree with you?

 

I am calm.
Laid back too.
But that doesn't stop pointing out things that I deem to be quite clearly wrong.
You think it a 'pointless exchange'?
Fine (sic) - i'll go with that,as long as you get those tyres checked

Atb,

 

Good, now that we're both calm , here's a little clarification on the key issues from my point of view:

1. I agree with the original post that 2.5k seems an excessive fine for bald tyres. You disagree, fair enough, no problem.

2. I never said bald tyres were acceptable, in fact quite the opposite. We agree here I think.

3. My other point was that it seems odd and maybe unreasonable to single out bald tyres for a large fine when other faults with similar potential for causing accidents are not.

4. My declaration about petrol-heads all driving like idiots was unfair, it's a fair cop. I like cars too, I have had lots of them.

5. My tyres are all in splendid condition, all 4 of them being less than a year old with much less than average (and carefully driven) miles, but I'll check them again tomorrow if it helps you sleep better .

Some of my posts were seemingly ambiguous, I didn't intend to suggest that bald tyres were a good thing.

All friends?

 

I'll think about it and get back to you.

 

Nope, too slow, offer has expired. Ha ha.


...only joking, of course....