We all know that times are hard and businesses are finding ways to save money. We also know that one of the first things to be cut when things get tight is the training budget but increasingly it appears that maintenance budgets are being cut as well and this can be a false economy (as can cutting the training budget but then I’m biased).

On all our courses, be it road vehicle, mechanical handling or abrasive wheels, the equipment is inspected for condition before being used and in more and more cases we are finding that repairs need to be carried out before training starts. In many cases it’s as simple as putting more oil in a car or van but in some cases it’s more serious. Tyres are a favourite. We often see road vehicles with illegal tyres and the faults range from incorrect (usually low) pressures to tyre wall cuts and lack of tread. The worst case we’ve seen was a car presented for use as a training vehicle where the tread was not only low but was missing all together and the steel wires making up the tyre casing were clearly visible. In this case the delegate had driven it 20 miles to the meeting point as well! When it was pointed out to him he said as it was a pool car he assumed someone was responsible for looking after it.

So, where does the blame lie if defective equipment causes fines injury or death? Well, under various aspects of H&S legislation the employer is reponsible for providing and maintaining safe work equipment (and as this applies to Fork Lifts I don’t see why it shouldn’t apply to cars, vans, LGVs etc but I’m not a legal expert) but the employee is responsible for making sure it’s safe before it is used so that one would have to be decided by the Courts.

From our Company point of view we will not use equipment or vehicles that are in anyway unfit or unsafe. If we find a problem with equipment (including vehicles) we’ll give employers a reasonable time to fix it but if it can’t be fixed in a time that would still give time to complete training fully then we’ll have to cancel the course. The employer would, of course, be liable to pay the full cost of the course as well as the cost of re-booking. Most of the time regular maintainence would be cheaper. We do understand that some breakdowns occur even with a full maintenance programme and in these cases we do try to come to an arrangement.

So what I’m asking here is that even if you don’t do regular maintenance on your equipment, if you have training booked (with anyone) please have a look at it before we arrive so that any faults can be rectified, that way your Company isn’t paying for our trainers to have a day off. It also means that you are minimising the chances of a Court case against you if an employee is injured due to defective equipment. Also, well maintained equipment is usually more efficient and therefore cheaper to run.

The UK Government recently announced that it was planning to consult on the possibility of raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph as they feel it would be a benefit to the economy due to shorter journey times.

As is usual in these cases, road safety organisations immediately came out condemning the idea on the grounds of road safety. I’m going to stick my head above the parapet here and say that I don’t think it would make any difference to the incident statistics. I’m also going to say, for the record, that I really don’t care either way whether the limit is raised or not but let’s look at it from a practical angle.

There is no arguing with the facts that the road safety organisations quote. If you’re travelling at higher speeds then you do have less time to react and any crash will be a bigger one – that’s applied physics. So why aren’t we campaigning for a lower speed limit? This will bring the number and severity of crashes down, we could start at 60 and then go for 50. When people get used to this we could get down to 40, 30, 20 – it makes sense if you follow the arguments of the safety campaigners. In fact, having a system that gives other drivers advanced warning that there may be another vehicle in the immediate area would be fantastic and reduce collisions to almost zero. How about someone walking ahead of every vehicle with a red flag? That would solve the unemployment problem too! OK I know I’m just being silly now but I get irritated by some organisations quoting bald statistics rather than looking at reality.

Just about everyone reading this (in the UK) will drive on motorways. Hopefully most of us attempt to stick to the speed limit – and all of us will know this isn’t always possible for practical reasons but that’s another blog all together. So what affects the speeds on motorways?

Traffic density probably has the biggest impact on the speed of flow. We’ve all been on stretches of motorway where getting up to 40mph is a bonus. In these cases a speed limit of 80mph wouldn’t shorten my journey time and so no benefit to the economy would result.

Light traffic usually means that I’m in lane 1 (the one on the left) travelling at 70mph being overtaken by lane 2 travelling at 80+ which is being overtaken by lane 3 travelling even faster. The drivers in these lanes don’t care if the speed limit is 70 or 80 as long as they don’t get caught doing the speed the feel happy at so no economic impact here either.

In moderate density traffic you get the majority of cars and vans travelling just below 70mph due to lane movements of other drivers, with a percentage trying to ‘force the road’ and travel above 70 to get there quicker and presumably inject some benefit into the economy. They don’t care that the speed limit is 70mph as long as they don’t get caught, however, with all the acceleration  and braking they have to do their average speed will still be about that of the slower traffic.

You have also got to factor in those natural speed limiting devices found on every motorway, the LGVs. These are restricted (in most cases) to approximately 56mph. Even if they are all in lane one cars and vans catching them up will usually slow down before pulling out into the faster traffic so causing it to brake behind them which instigates a ripple, which in turn brings speed down below the current limit. When one truck is overtaking another the situation gets even worse so again it doesn’t matter if the limit is 70 or 80.

The limiting factor other than traffic density is driver attitude and as many drivers look on the speed limit as at best an inconvenience the level of the limit doesn’t affect them or their speed.

What I’m trying to say here is that the legal maximum is irrelevant to most drivers in most cases unless there is a Police car, Speed Camera or Highways Traffic Officer in view as traffic conditions and attitude are more powerful.

So let’s assume that everyone decides that 80mph is a good idea and the limit is raised. The only time it will be of any use is in light traffic but has anyone worked out how much time we’ll all save? Ok, let’s do it. At 70mph you’ll cover a mile every 51.5 seconds whereas at 80mph it will only take you 45 seconds, a saving of 6.5 seconds per mile. I have a client who is based 90 motorway miles from me so if I had a trip to see them and I was the only vehicle on the motorway and managed to keep up to the 80mph limit I’d get to the meeting 9 minutes and 45 seconds quicker. In my job this doesn’t make any difference to the outcome of the meeting so the only benefit would be that I could spend an extra 9 minutes and 45 seconds in the office before having to leave. I suppose if I were delivering goods then it might be of help as I could reduce delivery times slightly.

Ok, if you multiply it up by the number of days we work per year I would save about a week  if I did the journey every day.  If we could slip that extra time in somewhere in one lump that would be useful, but we can’t, and an extra 10 minutes a day isn’t very helpful. Also, the chances of me actually being able to maintain 80mph for the whole time are slim (as we’ve already seen)so the saving calculated is a maximum and can be easily wiped out by a hold-up.

So where is the actual (rather than on paper) benefit going to come from? What about fuel consumption? I have done some, admittedly not too scientific, tests in my own vehicle which has a 2L diesel engine. It has an instant fuel consumption read out that I can access (and yes, I know they have to be taken with a pinch of salt) and at 70mph with cruise control engaged on a level track (please note the word track – not road!) it’s reading around 47mpg. At 80mph it reads around 39mpg, an increase in consumption of about 18% which costs me an extra £3.15 for my 90 mile journey or around £750 per year. Now multiplied up by the number of vehicles on the road that would be a benefit to the economy – if they can maintain the speed ….. which they can’t.

So on paper an increase in the speed limit is going to save lots of time over the year and give the Government an increase in revenue from all the extra fuel everyone will be using. The downside is that we’ll all die horribly in high speed crashes and the planet will suffer from the increase in the exhaust gasses the UK will produce. I personally think, and it’s only my opinion, that it won’t make a scrap of difference in reality.

To many drivers the tyres on their vehicle are just those black things at each corner. The only thing tyres do is to go round and round to make sure the vehicle moves and the only time anyone takes any notice of them is when they go flat or bald. Tyres are probably the most abused piece of equipment on any vehicle yet are probably one of the most important. Have you ever considered what actually keeps you on the road on corners? What it is that allows you to brake? Or accelerate? What keeps your ride smooth, comfortable and quiet? You’ve guessed it – your tyres.

So, having decided that your tyres are possible doing more than you think have you now considered actually how much of them is in contact with the ground at any point? The bit that’s actually touching the ground (the contact patch or footprint) isn’t very much when you look closely, yet this is the bit that you expect to do all the work. The area obviously varies from vehicle to vehicle and from tyre to tyre but if you say that it’s roughly the same area as a pair of size 9 shoes you won’t be far out – and that’s not for each tyre, that’s for all four combined. So there you are travelling at 70 mph on a wet motorway with not much rubber in contact with the road expecting to reach your destination. Let’s hope you’ve looked after your tyres.

There are two main areas to consider on your tyres and these are pressure and condition. Let’s look at condition first.

The thing most drivers are aware of regarding tyre condition is the vague notion that there is a legal requirement for a certain amount of tread depth on the tyre. In the age of the internet I’m aware that not all of you (in fact web stats shows most of you) won’t be reading this in the UK. It isn’t possible for me to quote every tyre regulation in every country but the information should be available online somewhere. In the UK the regulation for a car or van up to 3500kgs unladen weight is for a minimum of 1.6mm continuous tread all around the tyre across the middle 75%. The easy way of finding out if you are close to the limit without a depth gauge is to look for the wear bars. Certainly, all European tyres have these, they are raised areas of rubber that go across the tyre inside the grooves of the tread. To find them look at the edge of your tyre and you’ll find small marks built in. These are usually triangles or the letters TWI (Tread Wear Indicator). Alongside this, in the tread you’ll find the bar. These bars are usually set at 2mm so when the top of the tread is flush with the bar it’s time to think about a change of tyre. While we’re on the subject of the tread you should also take the time to remove any stones or debris that has become lodged in the grooves and check for uneven wear as this could mean trouble with tracking or suspension so get it looked at by a professional immediately.

As for the condition of the rest of the tyre it should have no bulges or lumps. Either of these could indicate a weakness in the casing that increases the danger of a blow-out. There should be no cuts in the tyre either. The UK regulation is that any cut should be no more than 25mm or 10% of the section width of the tyre or deep enough to reach the cords. If it is then you have an illegal tyre. Even if it isn’t illegal in your Co

untry the tyre is still unsafe and should be changed. Currently, the penalty in the UK for a tyre offence is up to £2500 fine and 3 points PER TYRE.

The internal construction of the tyre is also critical. Tyres are made from various layers of different materials all designed to work together to keep you safe. If there is any damage to this internal structure then not only is it illegal in the UK but also makes the tyre unsafe. The most common cause of damage to this internal structure is contact with a solid immovable object such as a kerb. So, if you do hit a kerb (or drive up it to park!) there is a chance that the tyre has sustained internal damage which could result in a blow-out so get it checked (and don’t drive up kerbs to park, that’s an offence in the UK too!).

OK, that’s condition, so what about pressure? In the UK the ‘Road Vehicle (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 Regulation 27 Section b says that you are committing an offence if a tyre is ‘not so inflated as to make it fit for the use to which the motor vehicle or trailer is put’. This is obviously a grey area as it doesn’t specify any limits but Police Officers I have worked with in the past say that as a rule of thumb they would work with up to 10% either way on the recommended pressure.

But why does the pressure matter? Surely if the tyre is still round and supporting the vehicle then that’s OK? Sorry – no, it isn’t OK. The pressure is important for several reasons.

As I hinted earlier, tyres aren’t just round black things made in one lump in a factory somewhere. Tyres have actually gone through years of research and development at great cost to the manufacturers to arrive at the round black things we know today. They are engineered to perform to a specification which they will do for a given pressure. The correct pressure will give the correct size footprint (and there isn’t much to start with – remember?) which gives the correct amount of grip. Too much pressure and the centre of the tread will bulge outwards so reducing the size of the footprint and so grip. Too little pressure and the centre of the tread will go inwards which leaves the weight of the vehicle running on the outside edges of the tyre which means that the size of the footprint is reduced again.

As you corner in a vehicle the tyre wall is designed to flex slightly. This flexing is dependant not only on the construction of the tyre but also on the pressure. If the pressure is incorrect the tyre wall will flex either too much or not enough as you corner which will result in handling difficulties. I had one vehicle which was so sensitive to this that just a slight drop in pressure was apparent when cornering. While we’re on the subject of tyre wall flexing, different makes of tyre flex at different rates so never mix different makes on the same axle (or preferably the same vehicle) as this can cause handling issues too.

Another issue with low tyre pressures is the increased risk of a blow-out. If the pressure in the tyre is just 10% low the resistance to moving increases the temperature within the tyre. If this continues for a long distance or a high speed the tyre reaches a temperature where it will blow-out. As this is often on a motorway (but not exclusively) you are then faced with the added danger of having a breakdown at the side of a high speed road.

It isn’t just safety that is affected by tyre pressures though, there is also a cost implication. If a tyre is 10% underinflated you can expect a 2.5% increase in fuel consumption. On current prices this means an extra 3.5 pence per litre in the UK (16p per gallon). This makes for an extra £48 in fuel cost if you do 12000 miles per year in a vehicle that does 40mpg. Most garages charge 20p for the use of their air line – your choice.

The pressure also has an impact on the tyre life. Running a tyre underinflated by 20% can reduce its life by 25% meaning you use more tyres.

So, you’ve decided to check your pressures. How do you do it? Surprisingly many people aren’t aware of the basics. You should check your tyre pressure visually every day. Just because they were round when you left it last night doesn’t mean they will be this morning. Did you drive over something yesterday that produced a slow leak in the tyre? Has someone been round letting all the air out? It’s a 2 second job to look at the tyres as you approach your vehicle. You should check the pressures accurately at least once a month and before a long journey.

Tyre pressures should be checked when the tyres are cold. As I said earlier, when a tyre runs heat is generated which increases the pressure so check them before you set off or at least within 2 miles of setting off.

Use an accurate gauge. Buy a good one and don’t rely on the ones at the garage. They often get thrown around and knocked into things which causes damage and reduced accuracy so always use your own.

Where do you find out about the correct pressure for your vehicle? There are a few ways you can do this. The first is in the vehicle handbook but usually a used vehicle has become separated from its handbook at some point in its life so manufactures now helpfully put a chart either inside the filler flap or on a door pillar. You can also contact a main dealer and ask them (although mine always reduce my pressures to below what the handbook says when I have it serviced!)

So hopefully I’ve given you a bit of an insight into what your tyres are for. This article by no means covers everything but has addressed the main points. If you want to find out more then the internet is full of information which you can access specific to your own Country’s regulations.

Just one more thing – it always pays to buy the best tyres you can afford. Generally, the more expensive the tyre (within reason) the cheaper it will be in the long term nd the beter it will perform for you.

So go on, show your tyres you love them – they’ll keep you safe and save you money.