Categories: just-life
Date: 24 July 2006 16:13:24
This weekend I was watching Channel Five's Top Gear wanna-be programme.
Miss Vicki B-H decided to do a scientific experiment looking at tire wear. She took two cars, one with new tires with 8mm tread and the other with 1.8mm treads (legal min is 1.6mm).
Driving the two cars at 50mph, with the 1.8mm car only three car lengths behind in wet conditions she was shocked and dismayed that the two cars hit each other. She was so shocked that she said that this showed that the legal minimum should be raised to 3mm.
This just goes to show that even though she is a semi-professional driver and tv presenter, she knows nothing about how to run a scientific experiment. (this is where the guys on Top Gear would reconize that they aren't scientists)
When driving at 50mph, a three car gap will pretty much gaurantee a crash between the two cars, no matter what the tires are like. The fact that the cars had a combined crash speed of around 30mph (they were travelling in the same direction) just goes to show that the legal minimum is exactly right, even taking into account of people driving far too close in wet conditions.
We know this is the presenters of the aforementioned Top Gear once drove a series of cars that they had bought for less than £100 into walls at 30mph (apart from Clarkson who's speedo wasn't working, so he did it at 40mph). And they were all fine. One broken bone in the hand (Clarkson) in three crashes.
So we know that even in the worse of conditions tires with 1.8mm tread work to slow the car down enough for the crash to be "safe" at least for the passengers. But that doesn't stop the suggestion that it might not be safe enough.
Bloody Nanny State...........
nb - I should point out that I do sort of enjoy Fifth Gear (though not as much as Top Gear) and this is more a rant at the suggestion that the legal minimum should be raised after their "experiment". Sadly, a number of other things annoyed me this weekend so tomorrow, Coke Zero.........