..IN THE
NEWS...IN THE NEWS
NORTH WEST TAXIS FITTED WITH WORN DOWN TYRES ARE APPROVED FOR LICENCE
A campaigner has exposed four coun- cils in the North West
for issuing
licences for taxis fit- ted with illegal un- marked and unsafe part worn tyres. John Stone, owner of Stone Tyres in St Helens, and founder of the Independent Tyre Fitters Alliance, purchased a Skoda Octavia and fitted it with four illegal part worn tyres and sub- mitted the vehicle to St Helens, Liverpool, Wirral and Sefton council-approved test centres for a taxi compliance test. Each council’s ap- proved test centre passed the vehicle
as safe, despite part worn tyres dating from 1999, 2001 and 2003 being fitted on the taxi. Also, the fourth tyre was an illegal part worn winter tyre, imported from Ger- many some ten years ago. No tyres were marked as ‘Part Worn’, as they should be by law, next to the BS or ECE approval mark. John told the St Helen’s Star: “This lack of care from our local councils is appalling and raises serious questions over taxi passenger safety and the relia- bility of the taxi compliance
and John Stone and the taxi submitted for testing
licensing procedure. “Part worn tyres are not safe, yet some councils are award- ing licences to vehicles running on illegal and potential- ly unsafe tyres – it is a disgrace and the licensing of vehicles running illegal part worn tyres needs to be stopped now.
“Full credit to St Helens Council as when I approached them with my find- ings they took the issue with great seri- ousness and de- cided there and then that this wouldn’t be allowed to happen again. “I’m pleased to say that on the back of
this campaign St Helens MBC has already agreed to ban the use of part worn tyres on all licensed vehicles.” John hopes other councils will follow suit to only allow safe new tyres to be used on vehicles transporting the general public. The Motor Vehicle Tyres (Safety) Regu- lations 1994 govern the sale of part-worn tyres, but these are rarely being adhered to, allowing unsafe and illegal tyres to flood the UK’s part worn tyre market. The National Tyre Distributors Associ- ation which repre-
TAXI INSURANCE RURAL
PRIVATE HIRE AND
FLEET INSURANCE SPECIALISTS
0800 458 9702 OR 01527 757 585 APRIL 2020
85
sents tyre distrib- utors across the UK, recently reiterated its call for an out- right ban on part worn tyres due to safety concerns. St Helens Council’s cabinet member for community safety Jeanie Bell said: “I want to thank John for highlighting that we have this issue in St Helens. “We want to work to- gether with John and his team and we’ll be backing the Ban Part Worn Tyres and the TYRED
campaigns
going forward. “ John has set up a website to ban part worn tyres on:
banpartworntyre.net
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