A kerb strike does its damage in a place you cannot see from the driver's seat, which is why so many of them get shrugged off and driven on. When a wheel goes into a kerb at an angle, the tyre is briefly crushed between the kerb edge and the rim flange behind it. The rubber usually survives that. The casing cords inside the lower sidewall do not always, and a broken cord leaves nothing on the outside to find at the time. It surfaces later as a small bulge, sometimes days later, and at that point the tyre is finished.
After dark the odds of spotting it are worse again. Street lighting falls from above, so it lights the tread and the top of the sidewall and puts the lower sidewall, the very part that hit, into shadow. The face that went against the kerb is hidden completely unless the wheels are turned onto full lock. If you have hit something hard on an unlit corner, that is the check worth making before driving off: full lock, a torch, and a proper look at the lower sidewall and the rim edge on both faces of the wheel. If you cannot see well enough to be sure, we work through the night and we bring our own lamps.
Away from home is when it stings. A hotel car park, a friend's street, somewhere you do not know and where you certainly do not know which fitter to ring. If that happens to be Globe Town or anywhere else round Bethnal Green, it is one number. Tight in Globe Town, easy in Cambridge Heath: neither stops the job. Level in Shoreditch, sloping in the Columbia Road area: we set the car straight first. The E2 postcode and a street in the Columbia Road area: that is enough.
24-hour tyre callout in Bethnal Green is part of our wider 24-hour emergency callout cover. For 24-hour tyre callout in Bethnal Green, call 07717 389637 or get a price for your tyre.
The side streets off Globe Town and around the Columbia Road area are narrow, parked nose to tail, and turned into at an angle by everybody who lives on them, which is how most kerb strikes here actually happen. They happen slowly, they sound like almost nothing, and they mark the one face of the tyre nobody ever looks at. If you have felt one late at night, leave the car where it is rather than pressing on to find somewhere better lit, and we will come to the bay and take the wheel off to look properly.
A driver turning off Hackney Road late caught a kerb and heard nothing worth worrying about. A bulge appeared on the inner sidewall two days afterwards. The cords had broken on the night and had simply taken that long to show.
Under a streetlamp a tyre looks perfectly fine, because the light lands on the tread and the shoulder. We work from below with our own lamp and the wheels on full lock, which is where the marks from a kerb strike actually sit.
A car parked in a permit bay off Globe Town had a flat spot on the rim flange and nothing obvious on the rubber. The flange had taken the hit, and the tyre over it had been pinched hard enough to be finished.
If the strike was hard enough to jolt the steering, yes. The damage from a kerb sits on the lower sidewall and the inner face, neither of which you can see standing beside the car. Broken cords leave nothing to find at the time and announce themselves as a bulge days later.
You can, and daylight beats a streetlamp every time. The reason we suggest checking there and then is that a bruised tyre is at its most vulnerable on the drive home, warm and loaded. If the corner was a hard one, being told at the kerb is better than finding out at speed.
A bulge or a soft spot low on the sidewall, a scuff line that has broken the surface rather than polished it, and a flat or a lip on the rim flange behind it. All of that is done on full lock with a lamp, which is why it takes a few minutes rather than a glance.
We do, every night of the year. A fair number of these calls end with us telling somebody their tyre is sound and their alloy is scuffed, and that is a perfectly good result. Across E2 we are usually with you inside 30 to 60 minutes.
★★★★★ 4.9 from 151 verified Google reviews.
Read all 151 reviews on Google →Prefer a callback? Send your details for a 24-hour tyre callout price in Bethnal Green.