Tag Archives: tyre safety

Win A PurePotions Hamper worth up to £50

To help us create a female friendly support message for this year’s Tyre Safety Month marketing campaign, ‘Bad Air Day’ we are delighted to be partnering with PurePotions to promote their range of natural hair products as part of our #TyreSafetyMonth activities.

As everyone knows, when your hair feels and looks neglected, we feel the same and it affects our personal confidence levels.

Now imagine how your car feels when its tyres have been neglected and they don’t have enough air in them to do their job properly! They don’t perform as well and it’s definitely a ‘Bad Air Day’ in terms of your motoring safety.

Our Competition With PurePotions

Thanks to Brighton business PurePotions, we are running a competition to draw attention to this topic. One lucky winner will receive a hamper of their natural products worth up to £50 including their Natural Shampoo, Natural Conditioner, Scalp Oil with borage and rosemary, Intensive Facial Oil and Seabuckthorn hand cream.

All you have to do is enter the Facebook competition at the FOXY Lady Drivers Club Page, which we posted on 6 October, LIKING and commenting as requested.

Alternatively use our jolly !

A Bad Air Day

 We’re anxious to alert women drivers to the fact that safe car tyres need taking care of, especially by checking the AIR pressure in them regularly.

This is because, when your car tyres aren’t properly inflated, they can’t grip or hold the road well enough so you feel this through your car’s bad road handling. When your tyres are over or under-inflated, your car is a harder steer, you’ll wear out expensive tyres and you’ll use more fuel BUT what matters most is the fact that your tyres will not perform well enough when you need them to brake in an emergency. And the wrong air pressure MIGHT cause an accident that could have been avoided if you’d taken better care of your tyres.

About Hair And Air Care…

Award-winning PurePotions was founded by Brighton mum Natalie Balmond in her search for an effective, safe, natural and non-steroidal moisturiser to treat her daughter’s chronic dry skin condition. All Pure Potions products are fragrance-free, paraben-free, not tested on animals and made in their UK workshop so you can be sure that you know exactly what is going on your sensitive skin.

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Here are the competition terms and conditions.

Here’s how to check your tyre tread.

Here’s how to find your correct tyre pressure.

Here’s where to choose a FOXY Lady Approved tyre centre that has signed a promise to ‘never overcharge, patronise or sell you anything you don’t need.’ They will check your tyres for free, advise you about the right tyres if you need new ones AND give you a free gift membership of FOXY Lady Drivers Club in exchange for your feedback about their customer service.

If not for you, perhaps a wife, partner or daughter might be helped here? Here’s where to either join The Club yourself or buy her the gift of improved motoring knowledge.

2017 Tyre Safety Recognition Awards

Thank you Tyresafe for another brilliantly well-organised Tyre Safety Conference followed by Awards ceremony held at The Belfry Resort in Wishaw.

This is always a great occasion to pay tribute to the many organisations that are raising the tyre safety standard ahead of others.

It also encourages new tyre businesses to come on board and work towards better and wider coverage of the tyre safety message during Tyre Safety Month, October 2017.
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Of particular note are three award winning tyre safety entries I’d like to draw attention to.

Bridgestone Tyres

The Outstanding Achievement Award, sponsored by Highways England, went to Bridgestone Tyres for its pioneering Driveguard Tyre technology.

For motorists who don’t drive cars with run flat tyres (run flat tyres are likely to be on BMWs and some sporty Mercedes) but whose car has a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) – fit Bridgestone’s Driveguard Tyres and a dashboard light will warn you about any imminent tyre puncture.

The clever bit is that the damaged tyre maintains pressure for a range of 50 miles, providing you don’t exceed 50mph – that’s plenty of time to get you safely off a motorway, perhaps, and to a garage to sort it out.

The peace of mind this gives is considerable – in theory you’ll never clamber into a car and attempt to drive with a flattish tyre that’s unsafe to drive.

Please see what FOXY thought of the Driveguard tyre when I reviewed it.

Westgate Tyres

The Independent Garage Award, sponsored by Kumho Tyre UK, went to Westgate Tyres in Morecambe.

Not only was this a popular Award because it went to a FOXY Lady Approved Tyre Centre but also because it involved Jane Bailey, FOXY’s Woman of the Year (2017).

To see why we singled out Jane Bailey and Westgate Tyres earlier this year, please read our blog.

Protyre

The Tyre Retailer Award, sponsored by Pirelli Tyres Ltd, went to the Protyre network of 108 fastfit garage centres across England, Scotland and Wales.

Another popular award with us because Protyre Centres are FOXY Lady Approved ie female friendly garages above others.

They demonstrate a clear commitment to customer service (proven by feedback), invest in quality standards, as in the CTSI (Chartered Trading Standards Institute) Code of Practice operated by The Motor Ombudsman, and work tirelessly (no pun intended haha) with the likes of Police and Fire services to check tyre safety standards and raise motorists’ education of this subject.
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With a projected 1 in 4 vehicles likely to have illegal ie dangerous tyres, there has never been a more important time to communicate a tyre safety message to motorists.

So to all the Tyresafe Awards entrants and supporters, keep up the good work and here’s to ongoing improvements to road safety and accident statistics due to all our efforts. Otherwise these will continue to affect innocent motorists, their passengers and pedestrians more likely due to ignorance rather than wilfulness.

FOXY

Feel free to publish, share or link to our tyre safety advice for women please. The more that read this, the better the female knowledge base.

If you’re a tyre centre who’d like to be FOXY Lady Approved please download details from the bottom of this website page/link.

Are wheel alignment services a rip off?

A tyre industry expert tells me “In over 90% of cases, imperfect wheel alignment will not cause premature wear to tyres. Yet at least one major tyre retailer pays a bonus when their fitters sell this service to more than 80% of their customers.”

I was reminded of this statement after I gave a tyre safety talk to The Women’s Hub in Worthing recently where I was asked why alignment wasn’t included in the cost of a new tyre.

‘Shouldn’t a new tyre be sold as fit for purpose’ was one of the questions I faced. By that she was suggesting a new tyre should come correctly balanced and wheels aligned.

In principle she’s right of course but I explained that a good tyre fitter would identify if there was a problem with a car – he’d be able to tell this from uneven tyre wear of course. But not all are that honourable it seems.

Wheel Alignment Options

In my experience, you’re asked if you need your wheels aligned when you buy new tyres and, if you don’t know why you might, you’re told various reasons why you should.

I have enclosed examples of the sort of thing we’re told at leading tyre sales websites. Advice ranges from the informative to the downright pushy.

But shouldn’t ALL wheels be checked for correct alignment BEFORE the tyre centre/garage/dealership sells you alignment services on the basis of your genuine need, tyre safety and future financial economies?

After all, we’re talking about an added £29 or more to a tyre bill here. And perhaps there’s suspension/steering work to be done to the car too?

Understandably suppliers of wheel alignment equipment sell theirs to garages by promising ‘a major contribution to their profit line’ as stated by the Supertracker website, when they up-sell this service to motorists.

NB: FOXY Lady Approved tyre centres, garages and dealers have all signed the FOXY Lady Promise ‘to never overcharge, patronise or sell motorists anything we don’t need.’ This is because we know that many automotive businesses incentivise sales staff to sell us services like alignment that we don’t need.

Website Advice re Wheel Alignment

This is what some of the bigger tyre businesses say about their alignment services.

From National Tyres & Autocare

Have you noticed any difficulties when steering? A vibration or pulling to one side? It may mean that your wheel alignment is in need of attention. At National Tyres and Autocare we use specialist equipment to make quick and accurate adjustments to the front wheels of your vehicle and with a front wheel alignment cost of only £29 why not add this to your next safety inspection?

They recommend this every 6000 miles.

This seems a reasonable and un-pushy explanation to me.

From Halfords Autocentres

Correct wheel alignment improves road holding and maximises the life of tyres. Aligning the front two wheels resolves alignment issues for most vehicles, but if additional work is needed a quote will be provided.

This does suggest financial and safety benefit for an outlay of £29.

From ATS Euromaster

ATS is selling three options costing £36.99 to £64.99 for a choice of alignment services.

Quite frankly this text baffles me (and most motorists) with its terminology and diagrams.

Knowing very little about the subject, I suspect that most motorists may fall for this pitch, even if they buy the cheapest option (which is still some £5 more than most others).

From Kwik Fit

Checking your wheel alignment regularly can prolong the life of your tyres by up to 12,000 miles and increase fuel efficiency due to the reduced rolling resistance with the road – saving you pounds at the pump.

Keep an eye out for unusual wear on your tyres, such as premature wear on the inside or outside shoulder, which could be a sign of incorrect alignment.

Kwik Fit offers a free wheel alignment check at all of our UK centres so stop in if you need any help.

NB: Kwik Fit offers front two wheel and four-wheel alignment options. The price of our four-wheel alignment includes the Hunter Hawkeye four-wheel alignment inspection and the front toe adjustment only. Additional charges will apply if further adjustments are required including any rear wheel adjustments. You will be advised at the time of inspection prior to any work being carried out. Should we find that no adjustment is necessary, we will happily refund you.

I have yet to see any evidence for their 12,000 mile claim or increased fuel efficiency, but the free check and an offer to refund where no four-wheel adjustment is necessary will reassure many.

Recommended Wheel Alignment Best Practice

I’d like tyre centres/garages and car dealers to agree to tell motorists that

1) “In most cases imperfect wheel alignment will not cause premature wear to tyres”
AND
2) “We won’t sell wheel alignment services unless we’re sure/can prove they’re needed”.

Then the wheel alignment suppliers will need to convince garages that they can STILL afford their equipment. Good luck with that sales pitch I say!
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Clearly wheel alignment is yet another ethical challenge for the automotive industry.

So, as I see it the challenge is for tyre service providers to

EITHER continue earning easy money selling £29 alignment services that most motorists don’t need or understand

OR do the decent thing and prove the need for wheel alignment services before selling them.

The likely outcome here, dear blog reader, is that good businesses will do the right thing (which is why you need to know who they are) and bad businesses won’t, getting richer from rubber-related rip offs.

This is all the more likely because garages, including tyre centres, aren’t regulated, allowing cowboys to trade alongside the genuinely good garages, tarnishing the latter’s reputation in the process.

By all means tell FOXY your good or bad stories relating to tyre sales and/or wheel alignment services – whether you bought these in a tyre centre, garage or franchised car dealerships. We can then share these within The Club.

FOXY aka Steph Savill

NB: To ask for tyre advice, Club members contact FOXY Helpdesk.

To find a good tyre centre you can trust, check our FOXY Lady Approved Tyre Register

By all means comment here via Twitter @FOXYTweets

Or Steph Savill via info@foxyladydrivers.com

FOXY adds female voice to MoT consultation

Sent to MOT411consultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk.

On behalf of UK women drivers, this is FOXY Lady Drivers’ Club’s response to the UK government’s proposal to extend the MOT test ‘grace period’ of new vehicles from three to four years. As you can see we are not impressed.
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Dear Sirs

I run the UK’s only motoring club for women drivers, FOXY Lady Drivers Club, and am writing to you, on their behalf, about your proposal to delay vehicle first MoT tests from their 3rd to 4th birthday.

I was a signatory of the previous Pro-MoTe campaign, when this proposal was last aired and I remain as baffled, if not more, about the Government’s agenda here. I am particularly concerned about the implications re tyre safety.

MoT Consultation Concerns

These are the points I’d like to submit for your consideration within the consultation period.

1) A Misguided Moneysaver

The safety issues raised outweigh the one-off saving of some £54.85 (ie one MoT fee) even for the many women who dislike visiting garages.

2) Dangerous Cars on UK Roads

Delaying a first year vehicle MoT from 3 years to 4 years is increasing the number of dangerous cars on our roads, for longer.

An unacceptably high number of vehicles are failing their first MoT and whilst it might be tempting to think that tyres and brake failings are the main road safety issues, we must not overlook the risks drivers run with inadequate lighting, wipers and or windscreen washer levels.

Even worse, a van could have driven some 150k miles before its first MoT safety snapshot. Hence their higher first time MoT failure rates.

3) Newer Cars Aren’t Always Safer

Badly maintained ‘nearly new’ cars are NOT safer than well maintained older ones. A modern car with a typical 30,000 miles on its clock, driven by a motorist who is oblivious to tyre care and TPMS warnings is too common an example to ignore simply because a car has covered fewer miles.

4) Car Servicing Standards

Car servicing/manufacturer/vehicle handbook servicing regimes/checklists cannot be relied upon to alert motorists to car maintenance neglect in between garage visits.

5) Motorists Knowledge of Car Maintenance

My experience talking to groups of women drivers confirms that many of them are poorly informed about tyre safety in particular – I imagine this is true of male drivers too.

The Tyresafe infographic draws attention to this, extrapolating that 1 in 4 vehicles on our roads is potentially travelling on illegal ie dangerous tyres.

They also record that the level of ignorance relating to TPMS (Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems) is increasing. See Tyresafe.org 2016 research.

6) The Cost of More Road Accidents

An increasing number of dangerous vehicles on our roads will result in more road accidents, more serious injuries and fatalities, more days lost at work, more traffic jams and more stress for our emergency services alike. As I see it, this is the potential risk you run were you to actively postpone essential safety checks on UK vehicles from their 3rd to 4th birthday.

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All in all, I’d rather be talking to you about organising courses to help women drivers understand how to/what it takes to run safer vehicles.

Finally, I remain unconvinced that MoTs should be discounted. Demand is inelastic and MoTs should be seen as a fixed cost. Too many MoT offers look like a ‘sprat to catch a mackerel’ tactic. I’d prefer to see some of the full fee being spent on delivering better customer service.

Yours sincerely

Steph

Steph Savill

MD

FOXY Lady Drivers Club

www.foxyladydrivers.com

Steyning

BN44 3GF

A Tale Of Winter Tyres

Steph testing new runflat tyres
Steph testing new runflat tyres

We are often asked to recommend and review types of tyres for winter driving.

That’s not always as easy as it might sound because there’s a massive choice out there, it’ll depend on the motorist’s usual mileage and, often, where they live.

I’m not talking about brand names here – we don’t have any deals going on with tyre manufacturers so we can be truly independent.

We’re fussy about the garages we work with of course! Please note we run a network of FOXY Lady Approved tyre centres where women (and men) can rely on not being overcharged or sold services they don’t need.

About Winter Tyres

Winter tyres are recommended in temperatures below 7°C or if you drive in Europe on the likes of a winter-sports holiday or in mountainous terrain. They will increase your safety and make driving less risky and scary in wet, icy and snowy conditions.

Winter tyres use a different rubber compound to summer tyres. As such they don’t harden in colder weather so you enjoy better grip, shorter stopping distances and, let’s face it, less chance of having an accident in the winter.

The downside is that you’ll need two sets of tyres, which is likely to be too expensive if you don’t drive a lot and/or can cadge lifts and leave the car at home until temperatures rise.

Different tyre centres offer different customer services. Some operate trendy titled ‘Tyre Hotels’ where you get your winter tyres fitted in October and they store your summer tyres for you until you change them back in March. And so on.

But probably the better as well as cheaper model, space permitting at home or in a garage, is to take your summer tyres home with you in October and your winter ones in the summer.

For example Micheldever Tyres, who own the Protyre garage group, give you smart tyre carriers so they’re easy and clean to carry and store.

About All Season Tyres

As the name implies, all season tyres are a combination of summer and winter tyres. They are recommended for motorists who live in particularly wet and cold weather conditions, all year round.

So if you’re short of storage space and don’t fancy the hassle of changing tyres twice a year, all season tyres may appeal more than winter tyres.

The downside is, they don’t perform as well as winter tyres in harsh conditions when you need them most. But they do better than normal tyres in cases where you’d aquaplane otherwise.

“You pays your money…”

About Runflat Tyres

An added consideration is if your car has runflats or a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS). In this instance a light on your dashboard tells you when a tyre pressure level is of concern and you might have a puncture.

At which stage you can either top up an offending tyre, there and then, or know you have a range of 50 miles (at a speed of no more than 50mph just in case) to get to a garage to verify or rectify matters.

This is very reassuring for me, on a motorway, for example. In my case I don’t have a choice because runflats are compulsory for BMWs and MINIs.

But the good news is that if you have a TPMS on a car that doesn’t specify runflats you can now buy Bridgestone DriveGuard tyres with the same properties and reassuring benefits as runflats.

NB: In this instance, I’m talking about a runflat as an ordinary tyre ie neither an all season nor a winter tyre. You can’t mix them with ordinary tyres, it’s to be all four or none, but you don’t need to carry a spare wheel or know how to use a puncture repair canister (see FOXY’s earlier blog about this).

The downside is that they can be quite a bit more expensive than ordinary tyres.

Conclusions about Tyres in Winter

FOXY tells Club members to buy the best tyres they can afford. If you don’t do much mileage then budget tyres will likely do nicely. If you ply motorways as I do, then you want the best premium (well known) brands as their tyres will last longer.

Remember that you get what you pay for re tyres. And NEVER EVER buy cheap part worn tyres because you don’t know where they’ve been.

Hopefully this blog will help you decide what’s best for you when considering having winter or all season tyres fitted. And if you’re a Club member you can always ask us for a second opinion.

By all means let us know what you decide and your tyre shopping experiences via Twitter and @FOXYSteph or @FOXYTweets.

FOXY

Tyresafe Online and Social Media Award Winner 2016