It’s official: motorists in Centurion, Gauteng, have set a new record for tyre maintenance. This is the news from the Bridgestone Tyre Check team after analysing the results of its most recent Tyre Check, held in the car park of Pick n Pay’s Lifestyle Centre Hypermarket on 1 May. The event was the second of 2013 and the 24th since the ongoing Tyre Check series of surveys was launched in 2007.
The results from the 996 tyres surveyed on 249 vehicles showed that 98% of tyres were within the recommended pressure safety limits. This is a substantial increase on the previous record of 95% set during a survey at Carnival Mall in 2012. Bridgestone’s tyre specialists checked the pressure and condition of the tyres on each vehicle surveyed and summarised their findings in a report left on the vehicle’s windscreen for the driver. Tyres are classified according to their degree of inflation: the recommended pressure is between 180 kPa and 290 kPa , ‘dangerous’ is below 180 kPa but above 150 kPa, and ‘extremely dangerous’ is reserved for tyres that are below 150 kPa or above 290 kPa.
Bridgestone PR Manager, Mandy Lovell congratulated the Centurion motorists on their attention to their tyres. “When Tyre Check started in 2007, tyre pressure compliance was routinely below 80%, and the record low was 54%,” she said. “A result of 98% is fantastic and we’re really pleased at the rest of the results too,” she added.
Of the 2% of tyres that fell outside the recommended inflation pressure limits, half fell into the ‘dangerous’ category and the other half were classified as ‘extremely dangerous’. The survey showed that percentage of vehicles with mis-matched tyres was just 2%, the second-lowest ever recorded. Every tyre was also checked for general safety, such as cuts or bulges and excessive tread wear. The number of tyres which were so badly worn or damaged that they were rendered unsafe was very low in the Centurion survey, at 3%. This was also the second-best result recorded for tyre damage and wear, behind the 2% obtained during the Moffet Retail Park survey in Port Elizabeth in 2012. However, in the latter survey, the percentage of tyres with correct inflation pressure was just 88%, far off the Centurion result.
Lovell said that overall the Centurion results were the best to date, and she added that the long-running nature of the Tyre Check project was yielding distinct trends. “For example, the Centurion results are an improvement on the results from our 2012 survey of Centurion, which were themselves above average,” she explained.
“But if one looks at our survey conducted in Germiston earlier this year, 20% of vehicles had mis-matched tyres, and only 88% had pressures in the acceptable range,” she said.
“These results are largely unchanged from the results we obtained in our previous Germiston survey two years ago. In our view this presents the traffic authorities in the Germiston area with a law enforcement opportunity,” she commented. “This is the kind of practical benefit we were hoping for from the Tyre Check project and if it can save just one life, it’ll have been worthwhile,” she concluded.
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