NZ Government to Test Safety of Winter Tyres

Winter tyres are to be subjected to official testing in New Zealand following numerous allegations that they have contributed to fatal accidents. The tyres will be jointly tested by the New Zealand Police serious crash unit and Land Transport New Zealand (LTNZ), the government body responsible for vehicle and driver standards.

Coroners’ reports into several fatal accidents have called into question the suitability of winter tyres, known as snow tyres in New Zealand, for highway driving conditions. Various reports have referred to the tyres as a “matter which required urgent consideration” and products that “did not appear to be suitable for routine highway driving.”

At an inquest into the 2005 death of a Christchurch woman, Steve Harrison, a product performance manager for Goodyear Dunlop’s South Pacific Tyres NZ, gave evidence that winter tyre patterns provided 20 to 30 per cent less grip than summer tyres on a damp to wet sealed road surface. However he did point out that the vehicle involved in the accident had winter tyres fitted to the rear and summer tyres at the front, commenting that the combination of the two varieties was not optimal due to the vast difference in grip between them.

The police and LTNZ will ship a number of winter tyres to Australia for evaluation, and future regulations will be decided pending the outcome of these tests. LTNZ media manager Andy Knackstedt said his department may need to look at tightening vehicle inspection standards to ensure winter tyres were not fitted to the rear of vehicles, and also look at the laws governing the entry of second hand Japanese vehicles into New Zealand – the source of most winter tyres presently on New Zealand roads. Current guidelines specify that the same type of tyre should be fitted to all four axles but it is not illegal to have winter tyres fitted to the rear of the vehicle.