Two ways to prevent premature tyre failure

Replacing your car tyres can be time-consuming and expensive. As such, it's worth doing what you can to prevent premature tyre failure. Here are two ways to do this.

Be careful about how you drive and park

The way that you drive and park your vehicle can have a significant impact on the lifespan of its tyres.

For example, if instead of braking gradually when you approach a set of traffic lights or get into a traffic jam, you tend to wait until the last second and press down on the brakes very abruptly, you may be inadvertently increasing the speed with which your tyres deteriorate. The reason for this is that the heat and pressure generated by this sudden braking can cause the tyre treads to wear out prematurely.

Similarly, if you are quite careless when you park and have a tendency to scrape your car tyres against the edge of the kerb whilst trying to manoeuvre your vehicle into the correct parking position, you may end up accidentally damaging these tyres, by creating small lacerations that affect the structural integrity of the tyre walls. This could make them more susceptible to punctures and sudden blowouts.

As such, it's important to make a conscious effort to brake slowly and gradually and to be careful about how close you allow your car to get to the kerb when parking.

Don't wait until your tyres deteriorate to start practising routine maintenance

Many car owners make the mistake of neglecting their tyres until they deteriorate to the point where their condition begins to impact the vehicle's performance (for example, when the excessively low tyre treads start to reduce their car's traction levels).

However, by this stage, the damage has already been done and the tyres will usually need to be replaced within a few weeks or months.

It is far better to establish a routine tyre maintenance schedule as soon as you get a new set of tyres. Doing things such as checking and topping up the air pressure levels every fortnight, having the wheels aligned once every two months or so and rotating the tyres occasionally can all help to prevent things like inflation-related blowouts, uneven tyre wear and punctures.

Whilst these activities do require a bit of time and effort, they cost very little and could actually save you the huge expense of replacing a full set of prematurely worn-out tyres.

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