The black year of the smooth tyre, 9% of cars with non-compliant tyres

The campaign edition Safe Holidays 2024 promoted by State Police with the support of Assorubber saw dozens of traffic police patrols engaged on the road and in the months of May and June they checked the tires of almost 10.000 cars on our roads.

The checks were preceded by specific training on the topic “Tires and road safety” which involved hundreds of agents from all over the world Compartments of Italy. This year the checks were concentrated in the following regions Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Lombardy, Umbria, Sardinia and Veneto.

The patrols involved, equipped with appropriate instrumentation, checked around 10.000 vehicles, focusing attention on the tyres, therefore first checking their compliance with the registration document and their conformity/suitability to the Highway Code.

Results of non-compliances on a national scale:

Smooth tires: over 8 cars out of 100

Tyres: approximately half of the cars are equipped in summer with high-performance winter tires for driving on snow.

Tires visibly damaged: approximately 6 cars out of 100

Non-homogeneous tires: more than 5 cars out of 100

Non-compliant tyres: approximately 20 cars out of 100

Vehicles with non-compliant tires and without inspection: 27 cars out of 100

“SAFE HOLIDAYS” HAS CONTRIBUTED TO TEACHING ITALIANS TO CHECK THEIR TIRES

Safe Holidays is a historic campaign, a virtuous example of collaboration between public and private to help improve road safety.

21 years ago there was the first edition with 5.000 checks on the tires carried out by the Highway Police of the Lombardy Department and the evidence was disconcerting that the 10% of the sample had smooth tires. There was a lot of surprise and concern. However, it must be noted that in those years the awareness of road safety and safety devices was somewhat limited if not absent. In fact, there was not even an obligation to fasten seat belts for all passengers and in any case it was a practice largely ignored. At the time, tires did not attract any kind of attention from the motorist and no one considered that they could play an active safety role, that is, prevent or avoid a road accident, not reduce its effects as in the case of passive safety devices.

To confirm this, survey conducted in those years among motorists, it highlighted that tires were not mentioned either among the active safety devices or among the passive safety devices.

In 2018 Assogomma repeated this survey by asking motorists again what the most important safety devices in their cars were. This time, drivers responded by putting tires second after brakes and before seat belts. An asymptote change that it didn't happen by chance but it is the result of a series of initiatives and activities to spread knowledge of the importance of tires for road safety, including numerous projects shared with the State Police.

The legislator also contributed significantly to rooting this new and positive sensitivity by introducing with law 120 of 2010 fivefold fines for sales, the assembly and maintenance of the most important safety devices which, coincidentally, are the same ones indicated by motorists as fundamental for road safety: brakes, tires and seat belts. 

This law also established a watershed for safe driving especially in winter. In fact, with the same the managing bodies or owners of the roads were able to provide for an obligation to circulate with winter tires or grip devices on board during the cold season clearly determined in its period of validity.

This requirement was welcomed by motorists, 30% of whom decided to adopt the double set of tires, recognizing the importance of road safety throughout the cold period, not only when there is snow on the ground. This virtuous behavior had as a direct consequence the tires being checked twice a year with beneficial road safety effects both for themselves and for the community. In fact, until a few years ago there was a significant reduction in road accidents and road deaths. Advantages also in the environmental field with the optimization of the lifespan of the tires and a direct effect on fuel consumption.

THE SMOOTH TIRE TREND

The checks carried out by the Traffic Police over twenty years ago brought out the phenomenon of the smooth tyre, quoting it at approximately 10% of vehicles in circulation. This percentage progressively decreased until it reached its lowest level in 2013 with an average percentage of 2,7%. In a decade the phenomenon had reduced by 73%, from 10 cars out of 100 it had gone to less than 3 cars out of 100.

Starting from the following years this percentage of smooth tires has reversed the trend and now in the last four years si is at around 9%.

We have practically returned to the levels of twenty years ago!

This negative change is accompanied by a similar reflective or stagnant trend in the number of road accidents and deaths on the roads.

The reasons for this changed direction can presumably be referred to a decline in attention towards road safety d. And in this sense the recent recall of Director of the ETSC (European Transport Safety Council), Antonio Avenoso, to the new MEPs and European Commissioners to intervene with specific measures to ensure that the new technologies present on recent generation vehicles are accompanied by interventions in favor of the periodic maintenance of the vehicles.

The absence of interventions to encourage vehicle maintenance and the consequent loss of purchasing power of consumers have certainly had direct effects only on the change of cars but also on the change of tyres, causing the number of vehicles circulating with smooth tires to explode.

SMOOTH TIRES = AQUAPLANING

The figure of 9% of smooth tires is to be considered worrying.

A slick tire on a wet surface lengthens the braking distance and alters the normal behavior of the vehicle.

This is because in the case of smooth tyres, the grooves in the tread are unable to fully carry out their function, i.e. to evacuate the water found on the road surface. In case of tread groove depth close to the wear limit and the road surface is flooded, the phenomenon of aquaplaning can literally be triggered “slipping on water”. In this situation the moving vehicle floats on a layer of water causing the tire to lose grip on the asphalt with consequent possible loss of control of the vehicle.

It is a dangerous situation that can be the cause or contributing cause of road accidents.

 OTHER NON-CONFORMITIES DETECTED IN THE “SAFE HOLIDAYS 2024” CAMPAIGN

There is also a constant aging of the fleet in circulation: in Italy they are registered in 2023 approximately 41 million cars, with an age average of 12 years and 8 months. 59% of cars in circulation are over 10 years old and almost 10% are over 30 years old.

Even in surveys 2024, the data showed a correlation between the age of the vehicles and their non-compliance with the Highway Code in terms of non-homogeneous equipment or lack of inspection as well as damage visible to the naked eye.

Over 1 in 5 cars (21,81%) with less than has tire problems or is not up to date with the vehicle inspection with more than 10 years of age the ratio rises to 1 vehicle in 3 (28,95%).

The non-conformities detected refer to visibly damaged tires which represent 5,42% of the national sample and the number of non-approved tires which represents 3,85% of the vehicles checked. Apparently low percentages but achieved on the fleet in circulation translate into millions of potentially dangerous vehicles.