Bridgestone Extends EU Road Safety Charter Agreement

The European Road Safety Charter was established by the European Commission in 2004 with the aim of halving the number of road deaths within the EU. The following year Bridgestone Europe signed an agreement to support the charter, and has now opted to extend its support for a further three years. Bridgestone says its new charter agreement will be backed by a proactive programme of tyre safety checks to educate motorists on the importance of correct and regular tyre maintenance.

Bridgestone plans to conduct at least 30,000 tyre safety inspections on European motorists’ vehicles during 2010. These will be accompanied by a range of educational tools including the distribution of up to 50,000 free tyre pressure gauges, 50,000 printed leaflets in various languages and 50,000 tyre check report-sheets to all participating motorists. The inspections will be carried out at various public places such as car parks, shopping centres, motorway petrol stations, dealer open days and other events.

The results of these tyre inspections will, as in previous years, be published. Bridgestone believes it important to make the findings known as doing so draws media attention to the issue of tyre safety and helps spread the message to all motorists that taking proper care of tyres is important both for their own well-being and that of the environment.

Publicised results from Bridgestone tyre checks in 2009, conducted as part of the tyre major’s global Think Before You Drive road safety campaign, show that 81 per cent of motorists in Europe drive on under-inflated tyres and 17 per cent of tyres are worn down below the EU legal tread depth minimum of 1.6 millimetres. In addition to putting motorists’ safety at risk, this lack of adequate tyre care wastes the equivalent of £4.7 billion in fuel and adds 9.3 million tons of extra CO2 emissions a year.