No spare tire and a blow out in 2017 Prime

I was thinking of not renewing my AAA membership, but so far it appears Toyota Road side is useless. I am 100% sure that I read that Toyota will provide unlimited Towing, but I think the catch here is that it is unlimited miles towing only to the nearest Toyota dealership (similar to Geico towing policy). My AAA membership seems well worth to keep it.

 

agreed, triple a hotel discounts pay for my membership every winter on the way to florida and back.

 

My only other car without a spare came with run flats. I'm going to order a spare for the Prius.

 

I never used the Toyota roadside assistance. It only goes to the dealer who charges you an arm and a leg. But apparently your Toyota dealer is worse and won't even take the the tow. Anyway, if carrying the spare is too troublesome, you can have the tow take you to your trusted tire shop. I use America's Tires and they're really good. You can probably leave the car there overnight and make an appointment for the next morning online.

Alternatively, I bought another Prius that does come with a spare. Now we share. Usually a little cost prohibitive but hey, I'm Prius fanboy.

 

I don’t trust Runflat tires. We had them on Sienna, but ours did not Run flat.

 

If my "run flat" runs flat, it's $500 for a new one at Tire Rack.

(I didn't think that car through...2k for new tires plus mounting etc, 10k tread life if I'm lucky...oh well)

I agree with you. I'd rather have a spare. I can fit one in the Prius, not in the run flat car though.

 

1--Extremely rare for a tire to fail unless it was run low on air, pinched by a curb, pothole, etc., ran over debris.
2--Toyota's towing certainly is limited. Towing added on my car insurance is cheap.
3--All these towing plans (Toyota, AAA, my car insurance) don't pay the tow outfit much. If a better paying call comes in, they get the truck first.
4--The dealership does not want cars on their lots, especially ones that can't be driven, unless they can fix them and get them going. I don't fault the dealership here.
5--A car warranty never covers the tires. The tire company warranty (sounds like Bridgestone for Dan) may cover something--read the tire warranty booklet in the owner's manual kit.
6--We've gone round & round about the lack of a spare tire. Very rarely needed. When one is needed, it is NEEDED. Too bad Toyota didn't at least offer a place to securely carry a compact spare.

 

On your point#3 "3--All these towing plans (Toyota, AAA, my car insurance) don't pay the tow outfit much. If a better paying call comes in, they get the truck first." I had a first hand experience in my old car, when a towing company didn't show up after 1.5 hours, I called back Geico and they checked the towing company and said the towing company had to pick another car due to a police call. The rule as explained to me is this "If the towing company gets a call from Police to tow a car from Freeway or any place, then it is legally binding on the towing company to attend the police towing call first and your tow becomes secondary nature". So it took me 5+ hours to have Geico arrange another tow. Geico told me that they can place calls to two towing company and whoever comes first can pick up. With AAA, so far I had much better experience.

 

Bet there was a Walmart nearby that stocked the Bridgestone Ecopia EP422 plus. If that's what you needed. Check online if you can to see the nearest store that has them in stock and check with the manager to arrange for the replacement. (During shop hours of course) That's where I got the 4 for the Chevy. My local stores take tows all the time because the spares were also flat.

 

Going on a 400 mile R/T tomorrow. Spare will be loaded.

 

During my 42 years of life, I only once was in a car that had a blow out. It was in the '80s, traveling on the freeway. We had clipped a folding beach standing in the middle of the road not too long before, which may have damaged the tire.

Barring a large scale manufacturing defect, I'd say blow outs are a rare occurance. Sucks when you do have one, and don't have a spare, but it would also suck getting two flats at a time, or just on the same trip, with basically the same results.

 

My thought about a compact spare tire is that while it may be desirable to have it in a vehicle for an emergency situation, it’s restriction on driving speeds of no more than 50 mph severely hamper its usefulness. If I get flat on highway on my long trip, I still have to take the tire to a shop to have it repaired or replaced to continue my trip at reasonable speed.

 

Yeah, so what? With a full-sized spare you have to do the same unless you are comfortable completing your trip with no spare at all.

 

That is why I replaced the donut spares with a full-size. The incremental weight more than paid for itself when there was a flat on the trip. A flat becomes a brief delay so we make our appointment or scheduled arrival.

Managing risks, one flat is rare and two on the same trip even rarer since the miles remaining are less. As a rough guess:

• f - probability of a flat per mile
• t - trip miles
• f * t = the probability of first flat on a trip
• f * (t/2) ~= probability of second flat on a trip already half over

A linear probability, the first flat can occur anywhere between the start and end. If you average the miles traveled, about half of the trip miles will be completed. So the remaining risk is over the shorter distance remaining.

I've seen off road vehicles with multiple spares since flats are expected. But they go "in harms way."

Bob Wilson

 

If I have a full-sized spare, I would feel very comfortable completing my trip without spare. Fix the tire after the completion of trip, at my leisure time. The point I was making is that I feel fairly comfortable not having a spare at all, as long as I can make a phone call for a help for reliable towing service. And if I am going on a long trip, then I would difinately take my full size spare in my car.

 

There's 3 levels:

1. No spare (and some sort of contingency plan, pump and slime, whatever)
2. Temporary, compact spare
3. Full size spare

For me:

#1 is a non-starter.

#2 is just fine. I want to be able to get on my way, staying off high-speed freeways is just fine. I just want to be rolling. In my one out-and-about flat with the Prius, it was basically to get me home, where I plug-repaired and reinflated the flat at my leisure.

#3 is overkill.

 

No spare and a contingency plan look like this for me:

1. Proper tire maintenance - rotations, pressure checks, replacement before 2/32".
2. Watching to avoid hitting things on the road.
3. Tire monitoring - look at the tires, watch for TPMS.
4. If you get a flat, use the separately-purchased plug kit first.
5. If that doesn't work, use the goo.
6. If that doesn't work, use the cell phone to call for help.

In 31 years of driving, I've never had a flat that wasn't caused by violating the first step in the chain.

 

Don't jinx yourself. I've got more time behind the wheel, had a three commercial driving jobs in previous lives, done a couple of 1,000 mile days, and that sidewall gash I previously described was my first one ever (16k on tire so still in "like new" condition). I also got a screw in my front last month but the TPS caught it in time to drive to a repair shop.

Most of my out of town trips like the one I'm leaving on right now are business related. Family trips are in the OutBack which has a factory spare.

 

Risk management includes the cost of a failure. If solo and a pleasure trip, the cost is low and no problem. If in a taxi/uber area near home, another metric. If with wife and her dogs, time becomes very important.

Bob Wilson

 

What was the specific tire/brand? I believe in the past some of the OEM tires had some problems.

We too had a blowout but it was road debris. Our tires were from TireRack.com and that includes 2-yr replacememt which was nice as it was about 1.9 years old.