Written by Menswear Style in Cars on the 22nd February 2023

Roads can often feel as though they are fighting you: offering blind corners, muddy patches or black ice that make you skid. Sometimes, even zooming happily alongside steep drop-offs can make your feet sweat… But the road can be your friend too, especially if you take one very important consideration into account. And that consideration is your car tyres. Let's take a more detailed look:

Anyone who has read historical writings and accurate historical fiction pieces will have seen endless commentary – subtle but always present – about how terrible journeys were: so uncomfortable, so much jolting and bumping, sometimes with people who have fallen ill needing to remain at someone else's home until they recover as it would be ill-advised to attempt to return home. This is not because the roads were so bad (although they weren't great) but because there was no such thing as a tyre and wheels were solid constructions with absolutely no give or cushioning at all.

Tyres began as simple 'air bags' which provided a compressible layer between the unforgiving hardness of the road – and they were hailed as wondrous inventions at the time! Punctures were common, drives were still not anything like as comfortable as they are today, and as well as tyres failing, entire wheels would occasionally fall off. The relatively high death toll – one which affected the well-to-do rather more than poorer people who couldn't afford carriages or cars, once the automobile was invented – saw road safety standards quickly put into place. This practice of legislating to prevent deaths proved a popular and effective one, resulting in the current MOT system for vehicles and a robust system of repairs and maintenance for the UK's busiest roads and motorways. This is why tyres appear several times in the MOT test's checklist: they are vital when it comes to keeping our cars safely on the road - get the best Bridgestone tyres in Sandy at unbeatable prices from Eco Tyres, if yours need replacing. But how do tyres keep us safe and comfortable?

How Do Tyres Work? 

The above-mentioned simple bags came with many problems, some of them caused by their users who would over- or under-inflate their tyres to create the desired effect. While this worked to a certain extent, these practices also weakened the tyres' structure, causing them to break down sooner and more thoroughly than they might perhaps have done. Modern tyres consist of so much more than an inner tube and a sturdy rubber outer-shell. Instead the 'inner' consists of layers of belts, which work together to give the tyre great strength and stability without losing any of its flexibility and comfort. This flexibility ensures the tyre grips the road securely – keeping you and your passenger’s safe while on the roads.

How Do Tyres Work, Eco Tyres, Safety, and comfort are the talking points of this article on the brief history of the tyre.