Poll: How Often Have You Had A Flat Tire?

[FLSUnFIRE]

I voted 20 years. In 30 years had a valve stem fail and went flat. Had a catastrophic blow out on the same tire on the end of a road trip a few months later (think it was sidewall damage from the earlier leak). My Silverado had a full size spare so not too big a hassle. Current car has fix a flat but the AWD system wouldn't like the donut anyway. I can get a donut and jack from a junkyard that is supposed to fit (the car does have the well for a spare and subwoofer) but I'd still be limping. I have roadside and rarely travel too far from support. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on my roadtrip out west as that will be a bit more remote than usual.

 

[Walt34]

I can remember about five flat tires in my life, the last one about five years ago when I was going to take the pickup truck somewhere and found a tire flat in the garage. Another recent one was on the Honda Accord because it had been improperly mounted and on what turned out to be a defective wheel. The others were run of the mill nails, screws, etc. although one was on a short road trip with a relative who had a blowout because the tire had been worn down to the threads. I was astonished that the guy would let his wife drive that car in that condition, they had plenty of money. At the time I was 17, worked in a gas station, so I had it changed in about ten minutes.

 

[Texas Proud]

Wow... where do I begin?



As someone mentioned there are slow leaks that are 100% flat... happened to my DD less than 6 months ago... she came home with a good tire and woke up the next day with a flat... zero air...



There are nails, screws etc. that WILL lead to a flat if not taken care of... I have had many over the years...


It was not mentioned, but trailer tires also go flat... we had 3 of them about 10 years ago... 2 were blowouts... instant flat... the tires were old... bought some new ones and also got a blowout on a new tire (if you read about them, they were nicknamed 'cherry bombs)....


As for cars with complete flats requiring a tire change, I would say the last one was a saw blade cut through the center of my tire and it was flat instantly but did not blow... had to replace it... about 10 years ago..



I had a flat a few years before that and had to change...


About 20 or so years ago had a flat in my Firebird... it had a strange spare that was compact that blew up to be regular size with a can of air... happened only once on that car...


My 4 to maybe even 10 others were also slow, but in a hour or so time when I was inside somewhere... came out to a flat on a car..

 

[Zathras]

I have had one flat in 40 years of driving.
Happened on a 76 Monzo with lousy tires.

Ever since then I have always bought good quality tires and haven't had a flat since.
I have had slow leaks, but never anything that required a spare.

 

[Willers]

I've had several in the last 10 years because of road hazards (nails, bolts, once a stray piece of metal).

When we went shopping for a new truck, some kind of spare was a must. We live in Colorado and wait time for roadside assistance in some areas we frequent would be comically long. A temp spare can at least get us somewhere.

I so miss when BMW's like our old 330 came with a full sized spare.

 

[Jerry1]

I voted 10 years. I forget the exact year, but I had a flat several years ago while working. I also had one not too many years before that. I think those are the only flats I've had in about the past 30 years of driving. As Street mentions, those are flats. There's been a few nails/punctures that I had repaired without the tire having gone flat.

I've only had one flat/blowout while driving. I'm very thankful for that. Even more thankful that it was a rear tire. Not sure how, because I've never bought a retread, but the tread separated. It was loud.

 

[disneysteve]

My wife primarily drives our Chrysler Pacifica PHEV. It also does not have a spare. So many houses are getting remodeled in our area that she ends up driving over a nail at least twice a year. Usually too close to the sidewall that it can't be patched. It's maddening.

Yep. Both the flat I had last year and the one my daughter had a few weeks ago couldn't be patched so we both needed new tires.

 

[Qs Laptop]

I've never had a flat tire that required changing it on the side of the road. In my entire driving time, over 50 years, I've had three instances of having nails in tires that caused a slow leak, two were repairable and one was not. The one that was not repairable was on a truck I was leasing with one month left on the lease. Since it came with a full sized spare tire I put that on the truck and replaced the spare with a very good used tire of same brand and model. Truck had 22K miles on it when I turned it in.

Far more common for me in Minnesota is a slow leak due to incomplete bead sealing on aluminum wheels. Weather gets below freezing and seal between the tire and wheel gets compromised, causing a slow leak.

 

[DrRoy]

about 5 years, including rentals.

 

[MC Rider]

In recent years mostly not actual flats, but nails or screws and I could continue to a shop and get is fixed. The last actual flat was maybe 5 or so years ago. My motorcycle started to feel like the front was wandering or something. While I was trying to figure out wtf, the rear went flat quick and tank slapped me pretty good. Managed to stop without a crash and the rear was shredded. A passer by called AAA for me, there was no cell signal there.

 

[5Miler]

The first and last flat tire I had was my first year back stateside after a 3 year deployment which was 1981. Strange looking wire nail almost eight inches long went in the tread and out the sidewall ruining the tire. Everyone had a spare tire in the trunk back then.

I still have a full size spare tire mounted under the bed of my truck.

 

[badatmath]

I get them so often if I go 2 years without one I start to worry. . . Lot of nails and such on the roads around here with all the construction and so on. I only drive on paved roads in town as well. And not actually that much - I get a low mileage discount on my insurance.

I picked up a gigantic nail this morning that was fixable at least so not flat just repaired.

 

[jollystomper]

It has been over 15 years since I had a flat away from our home. Fortunately in was in a shopping plaza parking lot, and one of my sons was with me, so changing it was not a big deal.

Before then, it seemed I would be getting a flat every 1-2 years. But since then, Just twice have I come to find one of our car tires flat at home. Both were slow leaks, and easier to manage (fill up with air, drive to tire purchase place, have them fix it under warranty). It have been over 3 years since I have even had to deal with that.

Part of the reason is working more from home, part time from around 2008-2015 and full time from 2016 until I retired. I had a 30-45 minute commute on roads that, closer to work, had heavier traffic and were in various states of repair/disrepair. The less I had to drive on those roads, the less opportunity for flats. In our area the roads are better maintained, and the highways rarely get so busy that you cannot notice road hazards (and then easily void them). Part of the reason also may be that I am not automatically buying the cheapest set of tires available .

I also never have had a flat in bad weather. Only once did I have to change at the side of a road, a highway, and that was way back when I was helping move one of my siblings into college in upstate NY. My car tire blew out, but I was able to get to the side of the road fine, and being part of a "caravan" of several family cars I was very well protected when changing.

These days, I have retired from changing tires on the road, hello emergency road service if needed .

 

[disneysteve]

One nice thing is that cars today have electronic pressure sensors so you get a warning when a tire is low. That can often give you time to get to a shop before the tire is completely flat. Before that was a thing you usually didn’t notice you were losing air until it was too late.

 

[RunningBum]

Last time for me was 10-15 years ago. Hit a pot hole cutting a left turn off an interstate exit too close in a bad rain at night. Made it a mile to a gas station to get out of the rain. The rim was bent, from the pothole I'm sure, not driving on it. No fix-a-flat, air pump or run flat tires (I assume) would have got me on my way. Freak accident, but I still want a spare tire in my car, as I've always had.

 

[pjigar]

I voted 30 years.
In my neck of the woods a spare may be your lifeline out of a bad situation because of there is no people to help out.

I didn't vote but we are on the same boat. We get flat or rather leak almost every 6 months between 3 cars. We live in the country so you better know how to fix or change tire. Only one car doesn't have spare tire so bought a rim and made my own spare tire. Takes up room in DD's trunk but she doesn't haul anything so works out.

 

[Al18]

Chances are if you have a compact or midsize car bought in the past 10 years, you don't have a spare. SUV's, Trucks, Jeeps and Full Size cars usually are sold with spare tires. The car manufacturer's do this as a cost savings and to extend MPG.



The big questions are what type of vehicle do you drive and where do you drive it?

 

[retire48in2018]

Maybe 6 in last 20 years.
3 in the last year. Maybe 1 was in a house building construction area, 2 others in poor city roads.

Between 20 - 30 years ago - easily had more than 1 a year - but I was having to drive to Mexico every day.

 

[big-papa]

Very seldom if we're talking about cars, but it depends. An outright flat while we're out and about driving somewhere has happened only once or twice in 40 years. What usually happens is that whatever caused the flat (nail, screw, random piece of metal) stays put resulting in a slow leak. This happens on average once every 5 years or so.

I cycle and it seems that I get a flat about once every 2 or 3 months. There's a lot of debris on road shoulders around here. I'd say that 9 times out of 10, the cause of the flat is a very fine, very stiff strand of metal - like those found in steel belted radials on cars.

Cheers.

 

[freedomatlast]

I won't buy a vehicle that doesn't have a spare tire or a place to put one.

If I get a flat along the side of the road, I want to change the tire and be on my way ASAP. And fewer and fewer new cars have spares, and people don't even look for it until they need it and don't have it. One of the reasons I recently bought a BMW X5 is that it has a place for a spare tire. The new Honda Passport we bought also has a spare.

Most hybrids and electric vehicles don't have spares. In the case of the Hybrids, batteries and electronics usually take up the space where the spare tire would normally be. With today's low profile tires it's easier than ever to blow out a side wall and bend a rim on a pothole, and no plug kit is going to fix that. It's kind of ironic that as low profile tires become more popular, and the need for a spare increases, the number of cars that have spares has dramatically decreased. Seems the automakers will do anything to decrease weight and cost at the expense of the unsuspecting consumer.

How often you might get a flat really isn't the point. In the unlikely event you do get a flat, and especially with the inflated prices of new vehicles, there should be a tire and jack available to get off the side of the road ASAP. These days with all the distracted drivers playing with their phones while driving, having a spare tire could really be a matter of life or death.

 

[donheff]

I still worry about flats, but I can't remember when I last had one. The only one that comes to mind was in Italy in 1984. But in the 60s and into the 70s I had too many to count. I drove a lot of beaters a lot of miles.

 

[Aerides]

I haven't kept a list with dates to know for sure, but I think only 2 in the past 20 years? One was actually a blow out on the highway so that might not count.

Only one actual "oh look I have a flat tire" but perhaps one more where I had a screw deeply embedded that required a replacement.

 

[TheWizard]

I last had a flat in the Mustang in Syracuse on the way home from Michigan in summer of '22. So when I ordered the new Mustang last July, I definitely opted for the extra cost spare tire...

 

[Midpack]

How often you might get a flat really isn't the point.

We disagree.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

I voted 20 simply because I cannot remember. I assume the OP meant one that left you stranded or required a tire change by the roadside. I did have one (Slow) that I noticed in my garage after the car's tire pressure system complained I left the nail in and drove it to a local garage. $24 later came out with the repair.

Our VW Car lease comes with roadside assistance built in, but we have never had to use it.