Automotive

Before You Forget: Keep Car Tires In Shape To Avoid Accidents

Preventing car accidents in Dallas or any area in the country requires a year-round vehicle maintenance. That is one of the first and most necessary steps to ensure road safety. A hot weather could damage a car, and the same goes for the cooler months.

Authorities encourage all drivers to implement the necessary measures that will maintain their vehicles all year round. Conducting car upkeep will help prevent serious road injuries.

A study showed that around 11,000 annual crashes in the country are due to tire failure. The tires are an essential part of any vehicle. Driving a car with worn-out tires will be a liability on any road. That is why it is important to have the tires checked for signs of wear and tear.

Here are three areas of a vehicle’s tires that a driver must regularly check to avoid an accident on the road.

Tire Tread

The rubber that grooves along the circumference of a tire is what people refer to as the tire tread. The tire tread creates contact with the surface of a road. The depth of the grooves will determine the much-needed ability of a tire to grip the ro circumference of a tire ad during dry and wet conditions.

When using the car repeatedly, the tire tread will eventually wear down. In effect, that will limit the efficiency of a tire to provide traction. To check the health of a vehicle’s tire tread, a driver could use a penny. The driver will just have to place the coin within the tire’s deepest tread, with Abraham Lincoln’s face towards him. Should the driver see the entire profile of Lincoln’s head, then the tire needs replacement.

Mechanics call tires with low tread depths as bald tires. Such bald tires no longer have a good grip, making a drive down a road that is wet from either rain or snow very challenging. Vehicles with bald tires or low tire tread are at a higher risk of skating or hydroplaning on wet roads than cars with high tire tread.

Tire Pressure

The numerical notation of a tire’s air pressure is what engineers call tire pressure. Every automobile has certain kinds of tires apt for it. The tires, in turn, have particular PSI values that the makers recommend.

When the tire pressure falls short of the recommended PSI value, drivers will experience a sluggish acceleration and a decrease in fuel economy. A low tire pressure will put the driver and the passengers at a higher risk of accident due to a tire blowout.

Tire age

Determining the date of manufacture of a tire is also valuable. Often, one can find the tire age on the wall of every tire. To identify the date accurately, one should know that the first two numbers imprinted on the wall refer to the particular weeks of the year when the tire was made. Following that are two numbers referring to the production year of the tire.

Tires commonly have a shelf life of around 6 to 10 years or roughly 60,000 miles. More visible physical attributes of an aging tire include cracks on its tread and wall, a pale color tone, and frequent loss of air that results in low tire pressure.

Takeaway

The key to preventing vehicular accidents is subjecting one’s car to a year-round maintenance. If there is a mechanical part that doesn’t seem to work the way it should, then it is best to schedule an appointment with the local dealer or auto shop for a check-up.

As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Hence, maintaining one’s car should be a priority to prevent any accidents that could cause serious injuries. It is better to avoid such incidents that require vehicle restorations, just compensations for the injured, and legal services of attorneys.