Unroadworthy.

Your tyre wear pattern can tell you a lot about any problems you might be having with the wheel/tyre/suspension geometry setup. The first two signs to look for are over- and under-inflation. Whilst this used to be a problem on older tyres, modern radials have much stiffer carcasses.









Let's say your standard tyres are 185/65R14 - a good middle-ground, factory-fit tyre. That means the tread width is 18.5cm side to side. So your contact patch with all these variables is going to be about 177.7cm² / 18.5, which is 9.8cm. Your contact patch is a rectangle 18.5cm across the width of the tyre by 9.8cm front-to-back where it sits 'flat' on the road.