According to a publication by The Punch Newspapers title “Beware! That vulcaniser’s tyre gauge may kill you”, it reads…

Forty-seven-year old Victor Afariogun, told Saturday PUNCH that since the last 20 years he had been driving consistently, he had only had a tyre blow out once, which was long ago until Friday, June 3, when his tyre burst on his way back from a journey to Badagry.

Narrating the incident, Afariogun, who was driving his Toyota Camry during the accident, said, “I was approaching Agbara when I heard the sound. I knew immediately that I had lost a tyre. I was lucky that I was not speeding at the time, but my vehicle still sustained some damage to the fender because I brushed a disused truck on the side of the road while trying to control my car.”

Afariogun, said his tyres were not worn enough to cause the blow out but concluded that a sharp object might have torn the tyre on the road because he had no other explanation.

He said, “I changed the tyre to my extra on the side of the road that day and when I got home, I bought a new one which I took to my usual vulcaniser to fix.

“But few days ago, I just decided to do a routine check on the tyres when I visited a friend who owns a workshop at Ikeja. He checked all four tyres and told me all of them were almost 50. I just did not understand why. He reduced all of them to the prescribed 40 PSI.

“What I did was to take the car to my former vulcaniser. I wanted to see whether he was the one mistakenly overinflating my tyres and might have caused the tyre blow out I had.

“When he checked the tyres, he told me they were all below 35. I just laughed. I told him that the device he used to gauge was very bad because he was getting the wrong reading. No wonder he always over- inflated my tyres. He could have killed me.”

Many Nigerians may not know how much a little device called the pencil tyre gauge used by most roadside vulcanisers is putting their lives at risk, experts have said.