Increasing numbers of cars come without spare wheels. Sometimes this is because the car manufacturer has fitted ‘run flat’ tyres and considers a spare wheel unnecessary, sometimes it’s because the spare wheel is either missing or in need of repair itself.
The RAC attends around 250,000 tyre-related incidents every year and has found that cars increasingly do not have functional spare wheels – usually for one of the reasons I mentioned above.
In this situation, a problem arises. The RAC patrol can’t change the wheel – because there isn’t a good spare – but they can’t tow the car to a tyre centre either, because of the flat tyre.
The result is that a recovery truck has to be called for to take the car to the nearest tyre fitting centre- usually with a wait of around one hour. This is a big delay for the driver and a big cost for the RAC.
To solve this problem, RAC patrols now carry a multi-fit spare wheel that can be fitted (temporarily) to almost any car. This enables the RAC patrol van to tow the car to the nearest tyre-fitting centre for a new tyre – even when the car doesn’t have a spare wheel.
The RAC believes that this will save its members a total of around 2,000 hours per month – getting them fixed and moving again much faster. It sounds like a good idea to me – and one added benefit that the RAC hasn’t mentioned must be a reduction in CO2 emissions – with fewer journeys by tow trucks required.
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