03/12/2012 Inside Out West Midlands

Hello. I'm in Coventry tonight at the home of the world's largest

collection of road transport. Where better to look at our love affair

with the car and ask, are the wheels coming off this special

relationship? Also on the show. It it's good enough for Harry Potter

and Wallace and Gromit, it's good enough for us. But what is the

enduring attraction of a motorbike and sidecar? We are selling them to

a huge range of people, from young families, older guys who just want

a sidecar in their lives and now's the time. First, have you ever

bought part-worn tyres for your car? With motoring costs continuing

to spiral, many of us are looking for cheaper ways to keep our

vehicles on the road. But just how safe are these tyres? Up to 4

million are sold each year. Giles Latcham's investigation suggests

Keeping a car on the road is not cheap, and drivers are always on

hunt for a bargain. But at what price? They sold me a tyre that was

so risky. I could not be here today if it had gone any worse. There is

a significant risk of the tyre collapsing and the consequences of

that are the same as the tyre exploding. One van, two days on the

road and ten garages. It is not exactly Top Gear. We are on the

trail of part-worn tyres. Second hand wheels which break the rules

can be dangerous, and they are definitely illegal. You would not

expect high-street garages to be selling them to unsuspecting

drivers. But we are about to find out, with help from this man. This

is Damian, an independent tyre safety expert. Today he is working

for us. He is going to pose as a typical customer looking to buy

part-worn tyres. What should we be looking out for?

The obvious stuff is things like tread depth. It's important to see

tread over the whole tyre, across the whole width and round the whole

circumference. There's also a requirement for part-worn tyres to

be stamped part-worn, so that you know what you're getting. And no

cuts or rips, either inside or outside. It's the inside ones are

that concern me, because that's stuff that you can't see, and you

have to trust the person selling it to you to have made that inspection.

We're visiting ten garages across the West Midlands to find out if

they are selling illegal part-worn tyres.

Where are we off to first? A garage in Newport in Shropshire. OK. Let's

Second-hand tyres which are not up to the job can be dangerous. Poor

quality ones played a major part in this accident. The driver, a young

father, was left paralysed. Tyres are more important than people

realise, I think. I don't like the idea that people are taken

advantage of by people they trust. Last year there were 709 tyre-

related accidents in the UK - 127 here in the West Midlands. It's an

issue Birmingham Trading Standards is well aware of. Its last

investigation was over two years ago, and found that nine out of the

ten second-hand tyres they bought were illegal. But has anything

changed? We're about to find out. We've reached our first

investigation, are you ready? ready. Let's see what we can get.

The plan is to buy one part-worn tyre at each of the garages we

visit. Then we'll test them to see if they meet the basic legal

So, considered opinion? It's OK - it's a budget tyre, it's got plenty

of tread, it's got no damage. It's got no part-worn stamp, of course,

which it should have according to the law. If it's got no stamp?

So this is our last stop - he's got �50 in his pocket, let's see what

he comes back with. Time to see if our cash has been

well spent. This impressive building is the Motoring Test

Centre in Warwickshire - MIRA. Our tyre expert's about to put his

skills to good use. Time to find out if our tyres are fit for the

road, or the dump. Let's see what we've got, here's our first

contestant. This one's been around for quite a while, if you look

really closely. You can see the texture of the rubber and the

grooves, it's really getting quite old and tired, it's starting to

show cracks. You've just bought this - are you happy to fit it to a

car you're now driving? absolutely not. There's a

significant risk of the tyre collapsing. The consequences of

that other same as the tyre exploding.

But us see how the next one compares. This is the one that

bothers me the most. There are lot of things are not to like. It is a

winter attire. You should not be buying one of these and putting it

on one corner of the car. If you put it on the rear of the core,

then at motorway speeds you significantly increase the rate --

risk of the car spinning. This is one of the better it tyres we have

seen. Lots of tread detail, it has not been driven it that much. It is

lacking the part-worn stamp. Out of the ten garages we visited, seven

had to part-worn tyres on sale. Two of them of potentially dangerous

according to a our expert. It is no surprise to some tyre safety

campaigners. We know there is a trend in the market place where

people are buying used or part-worn tyres. Probably for the purpose of

saving money. Date or a safety- critical items. We rely on them

every single time the wheels turn in the car. Just exactly what is

wrong with that tier, how are you going to handle that, will it

happen at high speed, can you as a motorist handle that all will you

take that risk? A pretty damning verdict from the experts. But it

seems that part-worn tyres are still a popular choice for cash-

strapped motorists. An estimated 4 million bus sold each year. Sold to

drivers like muscle. His newly bought part-worn tyre collapsed

while he was travelling at 70 mph on the motorway. To actually feel

your car pulling and have took Cubitt in a straight line, had I

not pulled of but when it started, the tyre could well have popped.

You are talking about it multi car pile-up. So what is being done? The

buck stops with trading standards, which has the power to bring

prosecutions. They are looking at our evidence. The people who are

willing to sell second-hand tyres like that are just completely

irresponsible and obviously did not think of the consequences.

Hopefully they and other people will now think. You have seen the

evidence. While there is nothing wrong with good quality part-worn

tyres, you might want to double check those wheels you thought were

a bargain, before you hand over You can talk to us right now on

Twitter. If there is a story from here in the West Midlands that you

think we should be covering, please drop me an e-mail.

Still to come, reviving a golden era with that the world champion

side kart racer. I was too busy to be frightened. But your head is

almost on the tarmac! But you are watching that what is happening, so

you are too occupied to be frightened. I hope you drive home

tonight was not too stressful. What would it take to drive you out of

your car for your daily commute. We have had access to a survey which

suggests that the mood of motorists is changing. Richard Westcott

reports. Building roads is controversial.

But not building them can be controversial as well. So how do

planners get it right? How do they decide where to spend our taxes -

on road or rail? The only way to ever be sure is to

beam ourselves into the future. And we all know how easy that is.

When these fans were watching their favourite series back in the '60s

we thought we knew how we would be travelling by 2012. There was talk

of having a personal car that flu. But sci-fi got it wrong, most of us

get around now the same way we did 50 years ago - having your own jet

pack remains a distant dream. And ever since I can remember,

we've assumed that traffic's just going to get worse and worse.

After all, we all love our cars, don't we?

Well, maybe not. Whisper it, but there is a rumour going around

transport circles that we are falling out of love with our four

wheels. In fact, they've even given it a name - Peak Car.

So what is Peak Car? Well, just look at UK traffic growth in the

'60s and '70s when we couldn't get enough cars, but by the '90s the

trend was already slowing, and by about 2002 average mileage per

person stalled. Is that love-affair with the car's cooling down? What

seems to be happening in the advanced countries including

America is that traffic growth due to, used simply is not going ahead

at the same rates it used to have. Well, now Inside Out has been given

the first piece of in-depth research into Peak Car in the UK

and this report is full of surprises. It shows that while some

of us are driving more than ever, others are dramatically changing

the way we travel. Take young men for example.

Now when I was young, I couldn't wait to get my hands on my dad's

mark 4 Cortina with reversing lights. Passing your test was seen

as a rite of passage, but apparently that is changing.

Market trader Lee Vernon is 19, but he won't be adding to the traffic

around Mansfield Nottinghamshire any time soon. He is selling up

because he has just been quoted �2,800 to insure his three-wheeler.

I really love it. It's a great looking car, it's a really classic

car, they're really rare. But the insurance is too much, and I can't

afford it. The research shows Lee is not alone.

Young men are driving 2,000 miles a year less than they were in 1995.

Women though, young and old, are actually driving more than they

used to. So what is going on? I think what changed, attitude wise,

is everybody just kind of gave up and got that used to using Facebook

and their phones and sitting around, or using public transport that I

don't think anyone even cares about cars any more. Young men are not

driving so much. There are a lot of possible explanations, such as the

rise of insurance costs. But if that trend continues, we will see a

lot less, traffic and a lot less, ownership as well.

So what else has the report found? Well, this is the rainy 7.16am from

Warwick Parkway to Marylebone. Over the last 2 years the numbers using

this line have gone up by a staggering 40%.

And according to the report that is in line with a national trend.

Since the mid-'90s the distance the average person travels by rail has

soared by more than 60%, the last time the trains were this busy was

The key growth we have seen is in two areas. One is business travel

in the morning where you can do some work and the other is in

leisure travel, especially at weekends. Train travel has become

much cheaper, at the same time as fuel prices increasing. It costs

more to travel by car. So that whole value equation is suddenly

tilted in favour of rail. And of course all those gadgets

mean you can now work or play on the move. You can even book your

next train ticket if you can get a signal! While business travel by

rail is up, company car mileage is down - by 40% between 1995 and 2007

- so that is before any recession. Scrapping tax breaks made the

difference and it has had a big impact on traffic in London.

Despite more people moving to the capital, there are fewer cars. But

the report found people in the countryside seem to be driving as

much if not more than ever. Of course in big cities, you do have a

lot of options for getting around. Fairfax Hall runs a London company

making specialist gin and vodka and thinks he has distilled the perfect

formula for company travel. Whenever they need a car or van,

they book it from a car club and pick it up from a designated

parking space 15 minutes later. is a small start-up business, and

we don't have a lot of money, so we invested everything we head into

the distillery itself. Actually, investing loads of money into a van

didn't seem like a good use of capital. So it is relatively low

cost. Then the other benefit is flexibility, you can jump into what

is essentially a brand new vehicle and drive it at 15 minutes' notice.

So here's a question - what does all this research mean for the

future of the UK car industry? After all, we have had a bit of a

boom recently. The UK is actually on course to produce more cars than

at any time since 1972. But that is not because we are all buying

ourselves a new motor. 80% are being exported - these Minis are

heading to Asia and South America. Last month in London at the RAC's

Future Car Challenge, another famous sci-fi face was in no doubt

what that future holds. I think what is happening now is a huge

challenge to the car industry. I don't see that the car has come to

an end, I think they are too useful. But we need to rethink the model of

how we use cars, car-sharing, all those sort of things, and I think

electric cars are part of that. An electric car in a city that you

don't own makes more sense, you can park it where it's always charged

and ready to use. It is not just the car industry that will be

looking at this research. The Department for Transport is

planning a major road building programme based on their model that

traffic will go up by 44% increase over the next two decades or so.

But what if they have got it wrong? After all, since 1989, successive

governments have overestimated traffic growth. This is the range

of predictions. The red line is what's actually happened. There is

always a risk forecasting that it will be wrong, but the key thing

the Department for Transport model does is it takes a wide and rich

set of data, it ensures that data is rigorously analysed. There are a

lot of useful things in this report for us to go away and look at but

I'm not convinced it shows we have reached peak car. The government

points out the UK population is predicted to grow by another 10

million in the next 25 years. And the RAC Foundation, who helped fund

the report, says that means we are still going to need more roads.

This is not the end of the car. The use of the car has been declining,

but for 75 per cent of the population, people will need to use

cars unless they have railways and buses available and most people

will not have those things. Almost half a century ago when Star Trek

started, this is what we thought travel in the 23rd century might

look like - and it is pure '60s. It all shows how hard it is to predict

the future. But the danger is assuming it will look like a bigger

version of what we have now. The motor car has been the transport

story of the last 50 years. I never thought I would say this, but it

just might not be the transport story of the next 50. Yeoman Sam,

And if you would like to find out how car traffic levels have changed

across the West Midlands, log on to Before the arrival of cheaper

family cars in the 1960s, like so many, a familiar sight on our roads

was the motorbike and sidecar. In fact one of the earliest sidecar

manufacturers was founded in Birmingham in 1912. And they're

still going strong thanks in no small part to Harry Potter and

You're probably more used to seeing a sidecar on the TV than on the

roads these days but sidecars like these have been big business for

one Midlands company for the last 100 years and they say demand is

increasing. In the mid 1950s there were around 160,000 motorcycle

combinations on our roads, and half of them were made by a builder from

Birmingham - Thomas Frederick Watson. Watsonian Squire in the

Cotswolds began life in 1912, so I've come today to find out how

they've survived a whole century and how they plan to survive the

Sidecars originated in France in the 1890s and became popular in

Britain in the period before the First World War. It was during that

time that Brummie Thomas Watson spotted the problem with parking

them. They wanted to be able to take them to the alleyway behind

the terraced houses, so he developed this side car which

folded so that you could wheel it down the alleyway between the

terraced houses, which was 3 ft wide, something like that, he

developed this sidecar which collapsed. He called it, when he

started his business, the patent collapsible sidecar. The sidecar

folded a bit like a cardboard box folds, you are able to fold it so

it is flat. That is how he dealt with the body. He had a chassis

which had hinges on it so it did the same sort of thing. The folding

sidecar was the beginning of something big. The company went on

to make them for every occasion and they didn't have to fold to be

fabulous. From two-seaters to ones for kids - there was even a sidecar

ambulance. They made hundreds of models, very proactive, they were.

Developing lots and lots of different models. I think very

often people had a motorcycle and bought a sidecar as an accessory.

Either when the family came along or when they could afford a sidecar,

so they could take the family out. So a lot of people would have used

the motorcycle for commuting to work and then attached a sidecar

when they could afford it or when the need arose so they could go out

at weekends with the family. The Watsonian had about half the

business. They bought the competition. They were a very

dominant force in the sidecar business and we still are.

their heyday was short lived - in the 1960s there was a new kid in

town and it was about to give the Mass production meant that families

started buying small cheap cars and sales for the sidecar dropped

dramatically. Watsonian managed to hang in there though. They had to

diversify, at one point they even built boat parts, but 100 years on

they're still making sidecars. are very busy at the moment, making

about 200 a year. A lot of that is export, exporting all over the

world, Europe, our biggest customer is in Japan. The home market is

doing very well as well, we are selling sidecars to a whole range

of young people, young families, old guys, people who have wanted to

cycle all their lives. But who exactly is the new Watsonian Squire

owner? Well Chad Brown, for one. do like the retro appearance of the

Watsonian, they haven't changed in many years, and I find many people,

when I go out in public with the bike think it is a lot older than

it really is. And I like that about it. It is something about the past.

People are very interested and nostalgic about them, really. They

often talk to me about their old days and when their grandfather or

somebody had a bike and they remember it. They originally cost

just 12 guineas, but now it's more like �2,500-6,000 and fans include

the Hollywood A-list. Recently I built Ewan McGregor one which is

being shipped over to LA. That was a custom one with a leather

interior, that was beautiful. Just for his dog, unfortunately. The

Harry Potter ones, of course. Built a couple of those. They are nice

and they sell to the general public as well. For some, sidecars are

just a good way of getting around, but for others it's sport. Racing

sidecars reach speeds of well over 100 miles an hour in races and it's

down to men like former World Champion Stan Dibben to keep them

on the ground. I was instructed to go to MIRA with Eric Oliver, and he

was so impressed with the way I performed there that when he got

back to the factory, he said he wanted to the Grand Prix with me

next year. You ended up in a Watsonian sidecar, what did you

know about them at that point? knew about Watsonian sidecars, they

were very, very well known. They were the leading sidecar at the

time, certainly here in England. They are fine racing sidecars.

have seen pictures of you with your nose about an inch from the floor.

How scary was all that? Quite frankly, you're too busy to be

frightened. Honestly, I'm not being silly, you're too busy to be

frightened. But your head is almost on the tarmac. But you are watching

what is happening. So really, you're too occupied to be

I was having a conversation with someone a while ago, he was a

Formula One car man, and I said, these Formula One cars, they do 200

miles an hour, with four wheels and one person. I said sidecars are

doing 190 miles per hour, thereabouts, with three wheels and

two people. Which is more To have a Midlands-based company

like this that has survived a whole century is a real success story,

but how do they plan to make it through the next hundred years?

People that have decided to buy a sidecar will buy a sidecar. It is a

toy, quite often people use them to work but it is a toy. If you have

made the decision to spend that money on it, you will. We are the

biggest and oldest side car manufacturer in the world so we

have got lots of heritage, a great name. We are looking at new

products all the time, we have got a new side car launching next year

and then we are looking at something to do because, maybe some

off-road style sidecars, so a lot of exciting things planned.

plans to move out of the Midlands? You can't beat working in the

Cotswolds, it is a nice drive to work, you can't beat the

surroundings, it is fantastic. who knows, with the cost of fuel

and travel rising for modern day motorists perhaps there'll be a

place for the sidecar on our roads That is it for tonight. Hope you

have enjoyed the programme. Good Next week, the sheep rustlers