Reader Says Poor Drivers – Not Used Tires – Are to Blame for Accidents
All this talk about used tires being bad…well, all I have to say is: Here we go again.
It is all common sense. People cause accidents, not tires. What I mean by this is look very hard at how people neglect speed. Anyone who drives a car can see that most people are safe. It’s the percentage of people driving that neglect the safety of others and themselves. All you have to do is go by any busy tire store – new or used – and you will see what I mean. They neglect tires like the way they drive.
The four most important things on an automobile are your tires. Visit any tire store and watch how many of the percentage of people I am talking about finally come in to buy tires either because it was inspection time or it took a friend or a stranger to tell them that they better get their tires changed before they blow out.
People, plain and simple, cause accidents, not the tires running on low air pressure. People are putting too much air in them when they pay for air at the gas stations and mini-marts. And, most of all, they’re riding around on bald tires with steel hanging out of them. What is a bald tire going to do around corners, especially on wet roads or when they are heated on hot days? It’s common sense again, people.
I said it before in other letters and I’ll keep saying it again and again: Educate the public. When a person gets their driver’s license, make him or her know the importance of a tire. New or used, it doesn’t matter, because one isn’t safer than the other with the wrong driver behind the wheel.
There should be tire safety checks not once a year but at least once a month. If a car gets inspected once a year, you know yourself that a tire could be down to steel on one side and have no tire at all on the other.
I’m just sick of hearing about how bad used tires are. We are in the used tire business. Like anybody in the new tire business, we care about the safety of our customers. We save our customers money. We save billions and billions of gallons of oil by putting a good quality used tire back into service for the less fortunate. Get that – the less fortunate, another thing Washington doesn’t care about, just like the greedy new tire companies that want a new tire sold – and only a new tire. That’s what it is all about: the greed in this country.
Remember, not using common sense causes accidents. So educate the few bad people out there. By the way, I have been in the used tire business for 26 years and I’ll be damned if some wannabe tire expert is going to tell me when a tire is good or no good. Come see me and I will teach you how to inspect a tire and show you a few things you don’t know about used tires.
And, by the way, why are some new tires are being sold that are known to show a pattern of defects after being driven for so many miles? They are always the same: razor cuts, shoulder separations, bubbles inside. Or the 45-55 series tires with hardly any sidewall that we end up shredding because of impact breaks that cause a tire to rip apart sooner or later. Why doesn’t the industry take a good look at these low profile tires and see how really good they are for the money the consumer is paying? My opinion is they are junk, junk, junk.
How about the tires that go on some of these SUVs? They are like toilet paper. Test them all and see how much mileage the average driver gets out of these tires, then you will see what I am talking about.
And remember, once you install a new tire on a vehicle and it is driven down the road, that tire is no longer new…it is used.
Steve Bucholtz
Owner
Steve’s Quality Used Tires
Shickshing, PA
I have absolutely no comment to make. – Ed
