Choosing the right car tyre could help prevent an accident

Tyres are not the sexiest of topics, and I think most drivers would admit to underestimating their importance – or more specifically not giving sufficient consideration to the quality of tyres they fit to their cars.

Our annual summer tyre test always throws up a host of things to take into account when choosing your next set. Arguably the biggest one is that there’s much more to it than price. The presumption from the uninitiated would be that quality goes up in line with cost. But that isn’t always the case; we found the most affordable tyre was certainly not the worst, and the second cheapest of the nine tyres we tested made it to the podium.

There was £50 between our most and least expensive options – a hefty chunk per corner – and some of the variations in performance were vast. On a wet motorway, the six-metre gap between the best and worst in braking could be the difference between avoiding an accident and reshaping your car on the vehicle in front. Not taking the time to pick the best option, or saving a few quid on a cheaper one, won’t look so clever then.

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When performing our summer tyre test, the difference in specific tests was also interesting, with six of the nine tyre brands scoring a top spot across our exhaustive criteria. The ones that topped the table for noise and rolling resistance – things that are easy for consumers to check, because the tyres are labelled – were very different to those offering the best grip, and the performance in wet and dry conditions was also varied.

And all this is without even opening the can of worms we uncovered earlier this year when we looked into the murky world of part-worn tyres, and whether you’re getting a trustworthy package when you pick second-hand rubber. Tread carefully if you’re going down that route, because our investigation found not all operators are checking tyres as thoroughly as they should.

The boots at each corner of the car are your only contact with the road. That’s a cliché, but for good reason, and it’s easy to presume there’s little difference between the brands. We spent several days putting various tyres through a series of extreme tests because this information isn’t readily available anywhere else – and the results show just how important it is to research and pick the right replacements.

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