Protyre News

We think tyres are vital, but you’d expect us to say that, wouldn’t you? So, as a part of our Tyre Safety Month activity with TyreSafe, we recently invited super-vlogger @shmee150 and Who’s the Mummy blogger Sally Whittle @swhittle to find out the real-world performance difference between new, worn and budget tyres for themselves. With three otherwise identical Peugeot 308s and Rockingham’s wet test facility at their disposal, we let them loose – and even challenged Shmee150 to avoid crashing into his own McLaren 675LT supercar!

Find out how they got on…

The Protyre team was joined at the test by Steve Lewis, chief instructor at R3 Rockingham driver training, and Pete Allington from West Midlands Fire Service’s Road Casualty Reduction Team. They were on hand to share their experience and explain from experience just why tyres are so important. 

Steve comments: “As a race instructor, I know tyres are probably the most important part of a race car. Why it is drivers on the roads don’t appreciate how important they are as well I honestly don’t know, and it’s frustrating!”.

Pete’s view is equally frank: “What we’ve found over the last few years is that a lot of drivers are now using tyres that are particularly worn. What we want to make sure people understand that buying budget tyres or using their tyres longer means that it could result in a collision.”

As you can read in her blog post, Sally found the experience enlightening: “It was like the difference between scary, terrifying and absolutely terrifying! When you’re in the car with worn tyres, the amount that you travel is much bigger, and the skid much bigger. Trying the new tyres back to back with the budget brand made me realise how poor the budget tyres performed too.”

Shmee has produced a video on his experience, which at the time of writing has amassed over 80,000 views: “I was shocked to learn that as many as one in four tyres in use on our roads are already at or below the legal limit, so when Protyre invited me to come and find out what this means in practice I jumped at the opportunity. I spent a day with the team trying different tyres back to back and was amazed at the difference in how they perform.”

Anyone wishing to take advantage of a free safety check can book online or call ahead on 0330 404 2067. Throughout October we are also holding public pop up event – to find out where we will be next check our Facebook page.

For more information on Tyre Safety Month, visit or dedicated TyreSafe section.