By Franklin Alli
Standards Organisation of Nigeria, SON, has removed five million bad tyres from circulation in order to curb accidents on the highway, said its Director General, Dr. Joseph Odumodu.

He said that the bad tyres were removed recently from warehouses at Ladipo auto spare parts market in Mushin area of the state by the agency’s team of enforcement officials.

Fielding questions from journalists during the agency’s Tyre Walk Awareness campaign, tagged “Arrive Alive: Tyre Safety; Standards for Safety,” held simultaneously at Victoria Island and Surulere in Lagos, he noted that all over the world, tyres burst is a major cause of accidents on the highway.
“We all know that this is “December month” and this is the time a lot of us travel and the intra city travel is a lot higher at this time. And we feel that if we are able to generate some awareness on tyres people would likely take some precautions and I tell you if we save only one life as a result of this activity my job would have been done because life is precious,” he said.

According him, many Nigerians are not aware that most auto accidents are as a result of ignorance on certain requisite tyre specifications which if strictly adhered to would save a lot of lives.
He pointed out that statistically, tyre pressure has a lot of impact on the life of the tyre and the safety of the tyre and yet only 20 percent of tyres all over the world meet the specifications of pressure.
“When we tested some on the road today, we discovered that all the tyres had different pressures ranging outside the prescribed specifications knowing that there are certain specifications that provide for safety. What we’ve done today is to make people aware that they need to stay alive by complying with tyre safety issues, “he said.
“So a lot of education is left to us to do. When we did our campaign on tyres, we also found out that there was 60 percent awareness and that was very satisfying, but we want to embark on newer programmes to make sure that people are responsible for their lives,” he said.

He explained that for a while now, SON has been doing a campaign on sensitising people against certain practices, because the agency realised that most effective method for the control of sub-standard products was consumer awareness.

“If consumers know that a product is not useful to them and that it can kill them, they would not buy that product and those who are bringing them will not be able to sell and if you cannot sell, you won’t bring in more, then you will be out of business,” he stated.
He said that despite the fact that there is a technical committee looking into the review of the regulated duration for the use of new tyres, people should not use a tyre for more than four years and cautioned anyone buying a new tyre to check what is called either the DOT or the ECE, which gives you the date of manufacture which is four years to the expiry date.

“Nobody should stay in a vehicle that has expired tyres, people don’t do it in other parts of the world; so why should we, “he queried.