Protyre invited Auto Express, super-vlogger @shmee150 and Who’s the Mummy blogger Sally Whittle @swhittle to find out the real-world performance difference between new, worn and budget tyres for themselves.
We took them to Rockingham's wet test facility and let them loose with three otherwise identical Peugeot 308s and and even challenged Shmee150 to avoid crashing into his own McLaren 675LT supercar!
Find out how they got on…
All round agreement - Tyres make a difference
Steve Lewis, chief instructor at R3 Rockingham driver training, and Pete Allington from West Midlands Fire Service's Road Casualty Reduction Team joined the Protyre team. They shared their experiences and helped explain why tyres are so important.
Steve comments: “As a race instructor, I know tyres are probably the most important part of a race car. Why it is drivers on the roads don’t appreciate how important they are as well I honestly don’t know, and it’s frustrating!”.
Pete’s view is equally frank: “What we’ve found over the last few years is that a lot of drivers are now using tyres that are particularly worn. What we want to make sure people understand that buying budget tyres or using their tyres longer means that it could result in a collision.”
In her blog post , Sally Whittle offered her view on the day: “It was like the difference between scary, terrifying and absolutely terrifying! When you’re in the car with worn tyres, the amount that you travel is much bigger, and the skid much bigger. Trying the new tyres back to back with the budget brand made me realise how poor the budget tyres performed too.”
Shmee has produced a video on his experience , which at the time of writing has amassed over 80,000 views: “I was shocked to learn that as many as one in four tyres in use on our roads are already at or below the legal limit, so when Protyre invited me to come and find out what this means in practice I jumped at the opportunity. I spent a day with the team trying different tyres back to back and was amazed at the difference in how they perform.”
As for what Auto Express said on the day, we will let them speak for themselves..
The facts and figures behind the dangers of illegal tyres
TyreSafe research has provided some shocking statistics:
- It is estimated that there are 10 million illegal tyres on Britain's roads which worringly, is the equivalent to one in four cars
- On average, 1000 motorists are killed each year due to illegal tyres
- One in five drivers have never checked their tyres' tread depth
- Alarmingly 42% of drivers do not even know how to check tread depth
Garages 
Tyres 
MOTs 
