Category - ADI

This is an OLD story from 2011. The campaign referred to is outdated now.

The Westmorland Gazette reports that Cumbria police are launching a month-long campaign to get drivers to check that their tyres are safe and legal before winter weather sets in (note that this article is from Winter 2011).

Obviously this is a highly laudable campaign. But one thing is niggling me about the story. It talks of the “20p test”, and how you can use a 20p coin to gauge the depth of your tyre tread. This isn’t quite right.

The official minimum specification for tyres on a car is that they should have not less than 1.6mm of tread across the middle three-quarters of the tyre’s width, and this should apply all the way around the tyre. Also, there should be no damage (such as cuts and gashes) or bulging on the sidewalls.

You can measure your tread depth using a suitable depth gauge, and these are available for a few pounds from any Halfords or motorists’ store. They’re very simple – just a plunger that you push into the tyre tread and a scale where you can read off the depth in millimetres. I definitely recommend that you buy one if you’re serious about driving safely.

At a pinch, you can use a 10p (NOT 20p) coin to check against the legal limit. That ring of small dots is about 1.6mm away from the edge of the coin, so if you poke the coin into your  tyre tread the dots should be hidden. If they aren’t – or if they are anywhere near not being hidden – then you must get your tyres fixed to remain legal. It’s worth bearing in mind that garages probably won’t MoT your car if it has less than 3mm of tread on any tyre, and it’s also my understanding that tyre manufacturers make no warranties below about 3mm anyway. (Edit: 2013 10p pieces don’t have dots anymore – I’m not sure if that’s temporary or a permanent part of the design from now on. If you use this method to measure your tyres, keep an old 10p piece somewhere handy.)

To be fair to the article above (and the Cumbria police), they don’t mention the minimum legal specification – theirs is a safety campaign with its own criteria – so they talk of using the 20p coin to measure your tyre tread depth. That rim with the writing on it is about 2.5mm wide, so if you poke the 20p into the grooves and you can see the edge of that border with the writing on it above the tyre then you’re unsafe inasmuch as you have less than 2.5mm of tread, and your road holding will be impaired as a result.

If you just comply with it, you’re less than 1mm away from being illegal. It’s very dangerous ground the Cumbria police department is treading, as it is actually saying that you ARE safe if you have 2.5mm of tread, when in fact anything less than 3mm is the usual limit of acceptability.

It smacks of launching a campaign but being afraid of how it will be received by the many people you’re likely to catch out with it – so lessen the impact by widening the acceptable limit and just give people a stern talking to!

This story was covered a week or so ago in another newspaper, but I didn’t think it was worth mentioning it. Well, not again, anyway (see this article, and this one). Wouldn’t want to be labelled a misogynist, now, would I?

The North-West Evening Mail has picked up on it as an editorial rather than a revelation.

The author, Louise Allonby – yes, a woman – notes that official DSA figures show women are about 7% more likely to fail their test than men, and that a major factor appears to be parking skills. Well, a lack of them.

As she quite rightly notes: well, there’s a surprise!

I agree. Keep saying women are bad at parking is just stating the obvious, and it’s not that which made me comment on the story. It’s some of the examples that she – as a woman – mentions.

There’s one about parking per se, but others about clipping wing mirrors, 3-point turns, not going on “scary” motorways, not going on bridges, not switching on their lights, using mobile phones, and so on.

But she also mentions my pet hate:

And it appears that a disproportionate number of cars being driven particularly badly around our towns have those ridiculous “Baby on Board” badges stuck to the back windscreen. To which the only possible response is “so what?”

Or is it that by having one of those badges in their car, women are somehow magically absolved from the normal rules of driving? If so, I think I might invest in one.

I lose count of the number of chavs I see with these things stuck in their cars, kids leaping around all over the place, being driven like they’re on a mission.

Another interesting story – on a very interesting website by the name of Lady Motor!

The article cites some recent statistics, which says that 6% of accidents on our roads come about as a result of changing lanes. They estimate that damage resulting from this amounts to nearly £440 million each year.

The article adds that poor awareness is the culprit, and that the figure has doubled over the last two years.

The article says not checking blindspots and not indicating have been highlighted as major reasons for the increase.

It’s interesting that on one of the forums frequented by learner drivers, there was a recent discussion about the things you’re taught that are a “waste of time”, and which you don’t bother with once you have your licence.

Top of the list was “mirror checks”. It seems that our darling little A*** GCSE and A Level geniuses don’t think mirror checks are important when driving on the road!

The problem clearly goes deeper than just not doing it.

For example, why would someone do a lane change without checking? Perhaps because they’re in the wrong lane to start with? Most likely, the outside lane – it is a trait of poor drivers/chavs that they always migrate to the “fast” lane, whether it is on the straight, at traffic lights, or on a roundabout.

So it isn’t not doing mirror checks which is the ultimate problem – it’s being in the wrong lane. And even that can’t be nailed as the absolute cause, because it is being poor drivers that makes people get into the wrong lane. And the definition of “poor driving” is down to a whole raft of issues.

Northern Ireland has been in the news today concerning plans to drop the current 80mg/100ml blood alcohol limit to 50mg/100ml. The changes would see an even lower limit of 20mg/100ml set for younger drivers and people who driver for a living.

The UK decided against a lower limit earlier this year – quite possibly because lower limits would bring us into line with Europe, and this government is overtly anti-European.

The What Car? article says that it would be the first time different zones of the UK as a whole had differing limits.

Scotland is also in favour of a reduced alcohol limit, and also of giving police wider powers for random roadside alcohol tests. Unfortunately for Scotland, the decision still lies with the UK government – unless the Scotland Bill is passed, which would allow them to make their own laws.

Also according to the article, Wales is not considering any change to its laws. I find that one particularly strange, as Wales has as much of a problem with this as Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England do.

A reader pointed me towards this story on WalletPop concerning a survey done by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau.

The story identifies so-called blackspots, where “almost” a third of drivers are driving without insurance. Uninsured drivers add an average of £30 to everyone’s annual motor insurance premiums.

I am totally against uninsured driving, but I can’t respond to the drama they seem to be creating around these blackspots. Is it any better if you’re maimed by an uninsured driver from, say, Richmond or South Kensington instead of Halifax, Birmingham, or Manchester? I don’t think so.

I remember one of those TV police shows where one of the traffic cops said that on the normal roads, you might find that 1 in every 10 routine stops involves an uninsured driver (this was in South Yorkshire), but there was a particular (very rough) housing estate in Sheffield where you could be sure that every stopped car would be uninsured.

And Sheffield doesn’t even feature on the list in this article.

Well, it’s been a few months and the media seems to be at a bit of a loose end – so, hey! Why not dig up that thing about raising motorway speed limits to 80mph again?

This article in the Telegraph rehashes the same information from February this year.

It is argued that by raising the limit to 80mph, drivers will have more respect for the rules. You may as well argue that it will also end the recession and world hunger if you’re going to make silly claims up like that.

A DfT spokesman said:

We need to make sure that we are looking at the right criteria…

This means looking at the economic benefits of shorter journey times as well as considering other implications such as road safety and carbon emissions.

Any proposal to change national speed limits would be subject to full public consultation.

At least someone is still in touch with reality (a little bit, anyway).

Going faster will only lead to shorter journey times if there is no other traffic around. A typical journey on a typical UK motorway anywhere between 7am and 9pm is actually made longer by people already doing 80mph (and more). I explained this in the earlier article:

What happens is that even if you’re doing 70mph, a huge number of people will be doing 80, 90, even 100mph if they can in the outside lane(s). Conversely, a huge number of other people will be doing 60 or even 50mph in the inside or middle lanes.

…it means that inevitably someone going faster is going to have to slow down. This cascades down the whole line, and eventually – after all the lane changing to get round it has run out of steam – someone has to stop. Then, this too cascades down the line, and everyone else has to stop, and the further back they are, the longer the wait to get going again.

I call it the caterpillar effect.

Raising the limit might have some benefits, but shorter journey times are not one of them. And with the overall ability of many drivers, safety isn’t either.

An article on MyFinances.co.uk lists 15 ways in which you can cut your car insurance:

• buy a car that’s cheaper to insure
• switch insurers
• secure your car
• increase voluntary excess
• get insured as a named driver
• pay upfront
• pay with a 0% credit card
• watch out for good deals
• tell your insurer if your circumstances change
• reduce your mileage
• driver more safely
• use a ‘telematics’-based insurer
• take advanced driving lessons
• be honest
• don’t necessarily get the cheapest policy

I have to say that the list is a bit of a damp squib, really. Except for the parts which are dangerously wrong and misleading (see the one I’ve highlighted in red).

MyFinances claims that the only problem with being a named driver is that:

…it is illegal to tell an insurer your parent is the main driver on your own car.

What they don’t explain is that it is also illegal to do it on ANY car if you are the main driver (owner or not), and with some insurers (Tesco, for example, so hardly the obscure ones) it will also be considered illegal if you are merely a regular user (which I wrote about in this article).

The one about paying upfront is also a red herring. For most people, it’s how much they have to pay right now that’s the problem. If they are quoted £2k, paying £184 a month (including a 10.6% premium for the privilege) is rather more manageable than paying £2k in one go – especially if they don’t have £2k in their pockets.

And this obviously has knock-on implications for the advice about using a 0% credit card. At best, it will only work for 1 year while the 0% promotion is running – plus, you need to be able to get a credit card in the first place, and not get sucked into the downward credit spiral that comes with the things.

Reducing your mileage? Right. And while we’re at it, let’s just not get a car at all and save the whole lot.

I’m sorry, but most of the advice is just unrealistic.

According to the Daily Star – in one of it’s more lucid (and less pornographic) moments – “the soaring cost of car insurance” is to be probed by a government watchdog.

Apparently, everyone is paying up to 40% more per year for insurance.

It cites young drivers being quoted a “whopping” £2,300 on a Vauxhall Corsa (typical chavmobile) worth £1,450, and how they’d “celebrate” if prices were cut.

A simple bit of arithmetic shows that if we weren’t all paying that extra 40%, young drivers would be having quotes of £1,650 instead. So that must be “minuscule” then, if we stick with the Star’s favoured style.

The Star appears to ignore the Co-op’s spokesman:

The main reason for [high insurance] is the large number of accidents caused by young drivers.

I’ll tell you what’s behind the price hikes affecting everyone else, though: the recession.

Every company out there is trying to maintain it’s profitability in the face as higher costs and falling sales. For companies whose income depends purely on people paying for a service, it’s fairly obvious how you maintain the balance.

This story in Exchange & Mart (and covered elsewhere) reveals that nearly half of British motorists are driving on illegal tyres – risking fines and penalty points, as well as lives.

The specification for tyres is that they should have a minimum of 1.6mm of tread across the middle three-quarters of the tyre’s width, and all around the edges, plus they should have no cuts, bulges, or other damage to the sidewalls.

Anyone caught driving on illegal tyres will get at least 3 points on their licence – but if all four are defective then it is a straight ban. And you can be fined up to £2,500 per defective tyre.

Measuring them is simple. You use a small tool like the one shown here, and available for a few pounds from Halfords or any motorists’ parts store.

However, it isn’t just ignorance that leads to people driving on illegal tyres. The recession has just added to the problem of people who can’t afford to drive having jalopies that are simply not roadworthy. Driving is seen as a right and not a privilege.

I notice on forums where young drivers hang out that the main topics are how to get cheap insurance, how to buy a cheap car, and how to fix things like broken exhausts and cracked windscreens – without having to pay someone to do it.