Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have considered making it a legal requirement for every new car to have a spare wheel.
Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government currently has no plans to introduce a legal requirement for the inclusion of spare wheels on all new cars. There are various solutions to flat tyres including full-sized spare wheels, a temporary use space-saver spare, or a sealant and inflation kit. Many manufacturers choose to provide a sealant and inflation kit which has benefits in reducing the weight of the vehicle and increasing usable space.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many (1) fatalities, and (2) casualties, occurred per 1,000 miles travelled on (a) smart motorways, (b) traditional motorways, and (c) dual carriageways, in the past five years.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
National Highways measures safety performance using key metrics, including, Killed and Serious Injuries (KSI) and Fatal and Weighted Injuries (FWI)) which look at absolute values and rates accounting for traffic flows, as endorsed by the Office of Rail and Road.
The latest safety data is available in the Smart motorway stocktake second year progress report published in May 2022 (covering the period 2016-2020). This data shows that, overall, in terms of serious or fatal casualties, smart motorways are our safest roads.
Table I: 5-year average (2016-2020) injury adjusted metrics per Hundred Million Vehicle Miles (HMVM) for all collisions.
Type of motorway/ road | KSI (per HMVM) | FWI (per HMVM) |
Conventional | 1.45 | 0.37 |
ALR | 1.38 | 0.33 |
DHS | 1.17 | 0.32 |
Controlled | 1.30 | 0.32 |
A-roads (on SRN) | 3.66 | 0.91 |
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of dual carriageways have a hard shoulder of sufficient width to park a vehicle.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Whilst we do not hold that specific information, most all-purpose dual carriageways do not have hard shoulders.
Asked by: Lord Robathan (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given, if any, to making the provision of a spare wheel in all new cars obligatory.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
There are various solutions to flat tyres including full-sized spare wheels, a temporary use space-saver spare, or a sealant and inflation kit. Many manufacturers choose to provide a sealant and inflation kit which has benefits in reducing the weight of the vehicle and reducing CO2 emissions.
Incidences of tyre deflation are relatively rare and the Government currently has no plans to introduce a legal requirement for the inclusion of spare wheels on all new cars.