TTADA wants Govt review of spare tyre and windscreen fines

Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) pres­i­dent, Visham Bab­wah, is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to re­view its tick­et­ing pol­i­cy when it comes to spare tyres and wind­screen de­fects, cit­ing glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing trends and on­go­ing sup­ply-chain chal­lenges.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Bab­wah said the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties are squeez­ing mo­torists for not hav­ing a spare tyre. He ex­plained that many hy­brid, elec­tric and even con­ven­tion­al ve­hi­cles are now man­u­fac­tured with­out spare tyres. Ac­cord­ing to him, this is large­ly due to de­sign con­straints and cost-cut­ting mea­sures by man­u­fac­tur­ers.

“Most of the hy­brid and all-elec­tric cars are not car­ry­ing a spare tyre,” Bab­wah said, not­ing that bat­tery place­ment of­ten elim­i­nates the tra­di­tion­al wheel well. He added that man­u­fac­tur­ers have al­so phased out spare tyres in many stan­dard ve­hi­cles.

In­stead, some ve­hi­cles are equipped with tyre in­fla­tion kits con­sist­ing of a com­pres­sor and sealant, while oth­ers re­ly on run-flat tyres that al­low dri­vers to con­tin­ue trav­el­ling short dis­tances af­ter a punc­ture.

Bab­wah point­ed out that sev­er­al pop­u­lar mod­els sold lo­cal­ly fall in­to these cat­e­gories, in­clud­ing the Hon­da Vezel, Yaris Cross, Hon­da Grace, Nis­san Kicks, and X-Trail, as well as var­i­ous Mer­cedes-Benz and BMW mod­els. Ful­ly elec­tric ve­hi­cles such as the Nis­san Leaf were al­so men­tioned.

He said these fea­tures are not new and re­flect prac­tices long adopt­ed in de­vel­oped mar­kets, where road­side as­sis­tance is read­i­ly avail­able. “Man­u­fac­tur­ers see hav­ing a spare tyre as wast­ing re­sources,” Bab­wah said, adding that weight re­duc­tion is al­so a fac­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly for elec­tric ve­hi­cles.

Bab­wah stressed that ve­hi­cles im­port­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go are large­ly de­signed for de­vel­oped coun­tries, yet lo­cal reg­u­la­tions have not ful­ly adapt­ed to these changes in au­to­mo­tive tech­nol­o­gy. He is there­fore urg­ing the au­thor­i­ties to con­sid­er ex­emp­tions where ve­hi­cles are man­u­fac­tured with­out spare tyres as stan­dard.

He al­so raised con­cerns about cur­rent rules gov­ern­ing wind­screen de­fects. While some lee­way is grant­ed, Bab­wah said the time­frame al­lowed for re­place­ment can be un­re­al­is­tic, es­pe­cial­ly when wind­screens for cer­tain mod­els are not avail­able lo­cal­ly.

“In some cas­es, no deal­er or wind­screen sup­pli­er has the wind­screen in the coun­try,” he said. He sug­gest­ed that mo­torists with mi­nor chips or small cracks should be al­lowed to con­tin­ue us­ing their ve­hi­cles if they can pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion from a deal­er or sup­pli­er con­firm­ing that a re­place­ment is un­avail­able and stat­ing an es­ti­mat­ed ar­rival date.

Bab­wah said such flex­i­bil­i­ty was in­creas­ing­ly nec­es­sary due to glob­al ship­ping de­lays, for­eign ex­change con­straints and geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions af­fect­ing sup­ply chains. “Some­times it might take two months,” he said, adding that these fac­tors are be­yond the con­trol of ve­hi­cle own­ers.

He al­so com­ment­ed on the re­cent pol­i­cy al­low­ing the im­por­ta­tion of eight-year-old ve­hi­cles, which the TTA­DA has op­posed. Bab­wah ar­gued that an eight-year-old ve­hi­cle is typ­i­cal­ly three mod­el gen­er­a­tions be­hind and may not of­fer sig­nif­i­cant sav­ings com­pared to six-year-old im­ports. He called for ad­di­tion­al in­spec­tions and checks be­fore these ve­hi­cles are li­censed.

“When we had six-year-olds, we had a pre-reg­is­tra­tion check be­fore li­cens­ing,” he said. “Some­thing sim­i­lar must be put in place to en­sure on­ly prop­er ve­hi­cles are al­lowed on the roads.”

Bab­wah said the as­so­ci­a­tion was wait­ing to see how the new pol­i­cy un­folds but main­tains that safe­ty stan­dards must not be com­pro­mised.