Free tyre checks alongside fire station charity car washes

Photo: Highways England

Highways England traffic officer Neil Waring checking car tyres

Firefighters and Highways England staff have joined forces in a ground-breaking partnership to help reduce deaths, injuries and incident-related congestion on the region’s roads.

In a national project being trialled in the North West, Highways England is working with fire and rescue services to offer free tyre safety checks and advice alongside a long-running programme of fire station charity car washes.

Highways England is working to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on England’s motorways and major A roads by 40 percent by 2020 and says focusing on tyre safety make an important contribution.  The tie-up with firefighters and the established charity car wash events is seen as a friendly and informal way of reaching drivers to spread the tyre safety message.

Stuart Lovatt, Highways England’s Road Safety Lead, said: “Highways England and fire and rescue services have a mutual interest in reducing the number of incidents caused by poorly-inflated or damaged tyres which could be picked up by simple and regular checks.  The Fire Fighters Charity’s National Car Wash programme is now huge – involving some 20,000 vehicles across more than 600 events annually. We think it’s a great way of reaching out to potentially thousands of drivers to check their tyres for free and give them safety advice while they wait for their cars to be washed.

“The feedback from the first two events we’ve run have been really positive and we’ll be assessing whether we can extend the idea right across the country.”

Firefighters are among the emergency service workers called out to tyre-related incidents on the motorway and major A road network while Highways England traffic officers and colleagues have to manage the congestion caused by breakdowns, punctures and road traffic collisions.  

Statistics show there were 80,000 tyre incidents on England’s network of motorways and major A roads between 2013 and 2015 and 27% of vehicles have at least one illegal tyre (Tyresafe 2016) and 40% of road traffic accidents caused by vehicle defects are tyre related (DfT 2015)