Your tyres are possibly the most underrated and overlooked piece of technology in your car. Yet, they’re critically important for your safety. And, while we all know that our tyres must have sufficient tread to be roadworthy, not everyone knows that having threadbare or unroadworthy tyres could lead to an insurance claim for an accident being rejected.

King Price Insurance’s client experience partner Wynand van Vuuren explains what causes tyres to become unroadworthy: “Age-related wear and tear for one thing, as well as unnecessary wear and tear due to poorly aligned and balanced wheels. Often, motorists think alignment and balance are the same thing but they aren’t. Alignment refers to how your wheels sit when mounted to the car, while balancing aims to balance the tyre and wheel assembly so that it travels evenly.”

Driving habits like braking hard and hitting obstacles such as potholes and speedbumps too fast can affect your wheel alignment, and unbalanced or misaligned wheels degrade your tyres and could ultimately contribute to an accident.

The impact of this on an insurance claim is that, if your tyres are worn to the point where your car is no longer roadworthy, then your insurer may not pay out your claim. Your insurer may ask an expert to inspect the tyres for wear and tear, and whether their condition could have influenced their performance or roadworthiness. Your insurer will also look at whether the condition of your tyres were a contributing factor to the accident.

Van Vuuren explains that a legal concept called ‘causal nexis’ comes into play when evaluating such claims. “If it is evident that the condition of a car’s tyres was a direct contributing factor to an accident, for example if you were unable to stop in time due to your tyres not having enough tread to grip the road surface properly, then the claim would probably not be paid out. However, if your car is rear-ended while stationary at a red robot, then the condition of your tyres would probably not be considered a factor.”

“Either way: It makes safety sense to check your tyres regularly, and have them aligned and balanced periodically,” says Van Vuuren.