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I will need to buy some new tyres in the near future and in the process of reading reviews on websites it occurs to me that the anecdotal information is not overly useful. The main reason for this is that often we don't know how long the tyre was fitted before a puncture occured. Even when we do know this there are several other variables (e.g. road type, riding type) that are not reliably reported.

So...I was wondering if there was any interest in setting about collecting data that would allow a better analysis of punctures in tyres. I suggest survival analysis would be a good technique to understand how long different tyres take to develop punctures. If people inputted tyre brand (we could select the top 40 most popular road and commuter tyre's), number of miles from fitting to first, second, third, etc. failure event or removal of tyre. We could include some other variables like season's used in, road type and average speed.

Any thoughts?

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  • I can't see how it would look like anything other than random data. After all, you can get very matching conditions (i.e. riding the same stretch of road on the same bike with the same weather conditions, just on different rides) and one day you'll get a puncture, the next you won't.
    – PeteH
    Aug 17, 2014 at 9:18
  • @peteH I think you could measure and control for the most likely variables. With a large enough data series I think it would come out in the wash.
    – user12879
    Aug 17, 2014 at 9:28
  • How would you see this survey working? To be more than anecdotal, people would need to "sign up" when they buy a tire, record when they installed it on what wheel of what bike, and record punctures / type / distance / surface(s). That's a lot of data. I've no idea how you could make it fit the SE concept.
    – andy256
    Aug 17, 2014 at 10:18
  • @andy256 I agree, I can't see people signing up when they buy a new tire. So maybe you could have a form for people to fill in when they either had a puncture or stopped using a tyre without having had a puncture. I would think if you just collected approximate miles completed (there could even by an alternative calculation for days used/length of journey to catch commuters), terrain (e.g. good road, poor road, trails), a tickbox for weather used in (sun, rain, snow). I think with enough datapoints other variables would settle out.
    – user12879
    Aug 17, 2014 at 10:37
  • I think it's worth saying that I don't anticipate this being a rigorous controlled prospective study. More a tool to add detail to the information available on failure events (punctures) for different types of tyre.
    – user12879
    Aug 17, 2014 at 10:38
  • You'd need an app like Strava, and in fact would probably be better off making a Strava add-on. People who obsessively share every ride with the world are more likely to be willing to also record which tyres they used on each ride.
    – Móż
    Aug 17, 2014 at 21:45
  • Are you suggesting that this be part of Bicycles Stack Exchange?
    – jimchristie Mod
    Aug 21, 2014 at 0:04

2 Answers 2

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This is effectively impossible to do. Rider weight, terrain, tube condition, skill level of rider, braking style, etc. all come into play for how long they last and comfort is not an objectively measurable quantity (and is a function of tire pressure, which is highly dependent on rider weight).

The extreme case would be fixies where even the gearing comes into play (in the development of bald stops when stopping) for people who do skid stops as well.

On top of that, tires change pretty quickly - by the time person A has worn out model X tire to a significant time to review it, person B won't be able to buy model X and will have to buy model Y instead. Plus, pretty much any online tire retailer has a set of reviews which you can thumb through in order to determine tire performance and what not.

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Since this was posted, I've learned of https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/ which does attempt a rigorous test of tyres in a standardised way.

The testing regime tries to simulate a road and measure resistance at different pressures.

Very occasionally they do an endurance test, the current one is on Conti GP5000, is up to 6000 km and may be found at https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/specials/grand-prix-5000-endurance-test

The results are not in a group-sourced way you've suggested, but this site is on the same lines as your request.

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