A winter tyre yesterday. (Or last month.)
Good grief, Charlie Brown. No sooner does a bit of serious weather land on these usually green and pleasant shores, and folk start jumping up and down making noises about compulsory winter tyres.
We've no idea whether self-proclaimed car supermarket Motorpoint has a vested interest in the topic, but their latest press release claims 46 percent of British motorists are in favour of legislation making fitting them compulsory. Can that really be true?
Well not necessarily, because what Motorpoint has (apparently) failed to consider is that the spectrum of motorists who visit their company website may not reflect the spectrum of motorist across the country as a whole.
That said, there's no doubt that more and more drivers are opting to fit winter rubber - the same press release says Kwik-Fit sold 50,000 winter tyres last year, and only 2,000 the year before.
Perhaps Kwik-Fit didn't stock them widely prior to last year, who knows, but my personal feeling is the accelerating winter tyre bandwagon is being propelled more by businesses looking to make a buck than anything else. (Yes indeed - shock horror!)
That and the 'elf and safety' fears of fleet managers failing to equip company drivers with purportedly safer winter rubber when temperatures fall below 7 degrees. (So would it be negligent to leave winter tyres on when the temp rises above 7 for a day in January? There's a conundrum for the ambulance chasers...)
Anyway, what's to be done? Should winter tyres be compulsory here in the UK, or should promoting daft polls be banned instead?
75% of PHers say... Oh, hang on!
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