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Old 01-22-2018, 11:37 PM   #12
Camaro1989
 
Drives: 2013 Camaro
Join Date: Jun 2017
Location: Arizona
Posts: 36
Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes View Post
But for what purpose? It'd be like running around with another whole battery in your trunk, "just in case" you get back to the car and the battery is dead. Can it happen? Sure. Is it likely? Not really, and you can get jumped, so it's not very practical to run around with an extra battery. Same thing with the tire, modern sealant works pretty darn well, I've used it more than once, for the type of punctures that are likely to require you to actually use the run-flat feature, but again, if you do, you often wipe-out the tire's sidewall, rather than just bringing your tire with sealant to the shop and getting the puncture plugged.

I think people are "conditioned" that a car should have a spare, but as far as actually using one, on a passenger car, I never have. Someone will always come into these threads and talk about the time they were driving along at 50mph and the front left tire hit an IED and blew apart on them, but again, modern steel-belted radials are very strong and unless you are taking tires out well past their wear limits, these types of events are so rare that I don't think it would ever justify having a spare.

In some applications, a spare makes some sense, but IME, not in this one.
I think that comparing it to a spare battery isn't a very fair comparison. Jumper cables maybe, but not a spare battery.

I can't remember where it is, but I read somewhere that AAA recommends that you get a spare tire if your car doesn't have one. When I looked for it in google this came up "In 2016 alone, AAA rescued more than 450,000 members who had a flat tire, but were in a car that didn’t have a spare."

I don't think that people are conditioned to have a spare, it seems that it happens more often than you would think. Again, I might be biased because I have had to use a spare in the past. I don't plan on getting another flat, but it would be good for me to have peace of mind that I won't be screwed if I do.
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