A question without an answer....

[Zak33]

this is doing my head in

you know the old question, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" which is hard to debate and also NOT to be debated here...

and you know the old question "why do you never see baby pigeons?" which is another great one, cos you never do.....

well Zak's being troubled by this.

Where is all the rubber from our tyres?

Seriously......each car has 4 tyres, and on average the car's gonna need at least 2 tyres by 20,000 miles.....(and lets NOT get involved in debate on how long tyres last)

Last year 2.4 million new cars were registered in the UK
Year before was just under that....2.1 mill....year before about 1.9 million



average tyre is 18.5 cm wide....the average tyre is on a 14 inch rim.....its rolling circumferance is 185 cm round (I measured a few)

Each new tyre tread is about 7 mm deep (so 0.7cm).....about half the tyre tread is gaps, the other half is rubber...you're supposed to get rid of them at about 2 mm....thats 5 mm used (0.5cm)

185cmx18.5x0.5 and then halved for the gaps in the tread =855 cubic cm of rubber.

2 per car.....2x855=1711 cubic centimetres per car
Lets say it takes 3 years to use the tyres....

2,300,000 (2003) + 2,100,000 + lets say...1,900,000 cars (thats three years worth) = 6.3 million cars

These are BIG numbers guys....

we are talking about the fact that we should be struggling through ankly deep rubber on the roads...

where the HELL has it all gone? Some must BURN off.....literally...and some must go down the drains, and clogg up the sewage systems...

but if there are 10 MILLION cars and ever three years each one needs 2 tyres cos its dropped 1.7 litres (volume) of rubber down.....

thats 17 MILLION LITRES OF TYRE RUBBER.....

WHERE IS IT ALL?

[RVF500]

Wellllll........y'know those bright coloured machines in the gents at the pub Zak?........

[Angus]

The shiny bits on the roads??

I'm sure if you found the total length of all the uk roads, and started to divide the figures would gradually get smaller.

Good question though.

I might have to go stat searching.

[Nox]

the pixies scrape it up at night and make new tyres

Nox

[Howard]

Wellllll........y'know those bright coloured machines in the gents at the pub Zak?........

[Rob]

Now you know why it gets slippery the first time it rains...

[Tumble]

well... 20,000 miles = 32,000 km = 32,000,000,000mm 1.7L = 1700ml (millimeters squared) of rubber.... thats just 0.000000053125 mm of rubber laid down per car over that 32,000 km, which is about 0.335 ish mm of rubber laid down every 3 years, going on the 6.3 million figure... not withsatnding that some of it will just evaporate, and some will get washed away by rain and other stuff like that...

[Devilbod]

I guess it also get kicked into the air a lot and is very fine, if I ride with my visor open and blow my nose when I get home it always leaves back marks on the tissue but it's not noticable on my face. Always did wonder what that was lol .
Oh and the egg came first - reptiles where around before chickens...
Pigeons I haven't got a clue about

[Zak33]

its just that those figuers ignore trucks....and bikes....and there must be LOADS of it..
it DOESNT BIO DEGRADE (well, not in this life time) and we have been driving for many decades....

[gobbo]

Hell of a lot of rubber. Most i imagine would get washed away.

Defo eggs came firsh, as checkens, imo, evolved from reptiles.

Baby pigeons, apparently they live in the nest untill they are 1 year old, by which time they look very similar to adult pigeons. Apparently.

[Vimeous]

Try this.....

Buy pink tyres.

Then see if the muck we all have covering our cars changes colour........

[Stoo]

Baby pigeons grow up very, very fast and just look like a slightly fluffier version of the adult (we've got a pigeon nest over the road)

I reckon most of the rubber comes off as very fine particulate and just joins up with all the other dust on the roads, you probably inhale some of it on every journey

[joshwa]

baby pidgeons - i've seen some small pidgeons - and the only other baby pidgeons i've seen have come out of the nest too soon, and ended up being run over.

[wilsonian]

i heard that in some parts of the carribeian were the reefs have been destroyed (natural and man) they have strapped huge about of tyers togther and sunk them, they make the ideal home for corals and fish - so i've heard!

also, if you live in manchester (longsight way) - about 6 months ago a tyer yard (old disused tyers) got burned to the ground due to kids messing around, so i bet a fair few 1000 went then!

[wilsonian]

oh another one, cut them in half, turn them inside out and you have a very cheesey plant pot! (few houses on my road have them!)

also tyer walls at race tracks.....

kids playing grounds as well, tyer swings were the daddy when i was a kid!

[Russ]

its like, why does the 1 line on my dash go up and the expensive line go down when i boot it in 2nd?