Nationally, adults drive a vehicle an average of an hour and a half each day. When we spend enough time behind the wheel, most of us will end up having unexpected mishaps, such as a flat tire.
Only sixty percent of Americans can change a flat tire. The problem with this is that in an entire year, there’s at least 220,000,000 flat tires, and over half of the population do not know how to fix it.
Say you’re driving down the road, there’s nothing around you, you’re listening to your favorite tunes, you’re thinking how glad you are that you’ll be able to get home in time for your family dinner, when suddenly, you hear a loud POP, and the car starts slowing down. You pull over, and your front driver’s side tire is now flat. Your phone is dead, and there is no one around.
So, what are you going to do?
Here are the steps for changing a flat tire:
- Whenever you can, safely pull your car to the side of the road.
- Grab the screw jack and lug wrench from the vehicle.
- Loosen the lug nuts with the tire on the ground.
- Place the screw jack on an appropriate part of the vehicle’s frame and jack your vehicle up. When you do this, be extremely careful.
- After jacking the tire off the ground, remove the lug nuts.
- Remove the flat tire from the vehicle.
- Grab the spare tire and install it onto the vehicle.
- Screw the lug nuts back on the vehicle and tighten them in a star pattern.
- Slowly lower the jack until the tire touches the ground.
- Tighten your lug nuts again in a star pattern.
- Remove the jack and put your equipment back into your vehicle.
- Safely head on down the road.
Now if you ever get a flat tire on the side of the road, you’ll hopefully know how to change it!