The news item in last week’s issue regarding the tyre ban law [routeone/News/27 February] is very timely indeed, as there has just been an inquest into how five people died on the M5 in September 2017 when a horsebox fitted with an 18-year-old tyre to the front offside failed.
This accident was preventable and avoidable; had the Department for Transport (DfT) taken the necessary steps to ban any tyres over 10 years old after another tragic accident in 2012 involving a coach on the A3 when a 19-year-old tyre fitted to the front axle failed. As a result, three people died.
In 2013, the DfT advised operators against fitting older tyres to the front axle. Last year DVSA updated the guidance as to the use of 10-year-old tyres on the front axles.
Why has this situation dragged on for so long? It has been seven years when the tyre manufactures are saying that after eight years the tyres start to degrade internally due to the ageing rubber compounds and chemicals that make up the tyre. All of this looks like shocking ineptitude by the DfT and DVSA.
We should all thank Frances Molloy, who tragically lost her son Michael in the coach crash in 2012, and her constant campaigning with colleagues under the Tyred campaign name, that has at last achieved; the Government is going to consult on a 10-year tyre ban law.
- Ian Ashman, A and J Coaches
