Your tyres have been slashed

Coming out to find a tyre cut is a different feeling from finding one flat. A puncture is bad luck. A slash is somebody's decision, and it usually comes with the suspicion that they may have done more than one. That changes the order of what you should do, because two of the useful steps have to happen before you touch anything.

Can a slashed tyre be repaired?

No. Not sometimes, not if it is small, and not if it is in the middle of the tread. The British Tyre Manufacturers' Association position statement reproducing BS AU 159 permits minor repairs only within a central zone of the tyre, caps the size of the penetration at 6mm, and explicitly lists "splits, cuts, rubber crazing/cracking reaching the casing" among the conditions where a repair must not be undertaken.

A slash is a cut by definition. The standard's repairable case is a small round penetration from something like a nail, in the central portion of the tread; the repairable zone runs to between 60% and 70% of the tyre's section width depending on its size. A blade drawn through the rubber is a different kind of damage entirely, and no amount of it being "only a small one" brings it inside the standard.

Before you touch anything

Photograph it, then report it. Both are much easier now than in a week's time, and the second one is the step people skip and later regret, because the reference number it produces is what an insurer will ask for.

1. Photograph the damage before you move or clean anything. Wide shots showing the car and where it is parked, then close-ups of each cut. The AA's own advice on vandalism is not to disturb evidence or clean up, and to take photographs.
2. Check all four, and the rest of the car. If someone cut one they may have cut more, and bodywork damage found tomorrow is much harder to attach to the same incident.
3. Note the time you found it, and the last time you know the car was undamaged.
4. Report it to the police. For damage discovered after the event, with nobody around, that is 101 or an online report. Police guidance reserves 999 for a crime in progress, a suspect nearby, or a threat to safety — so if you disturb someone doing it, that is a 999 call.
5. Ask for the crime reference number before you hang up, and write it down.

Keep the cut tyres if you can, at least until any claim is settled. They are the physical evidence of what happened, and once they are gone the only record is your photographs.

Will insurance cover it?

Often, but do not assume it. This is the part where the honest answer is genuinely "read your own policy", because named UK insurers do not agree with each other.

Those are three different answers from three named providers, and the RAC one is the reason not to generalise. "Comprehensive covers vandalism" is a reasonable rule of thumb and it is not a guarantee. The two things that recur across all of them are that you will normally pay the excess, and that the crime reference number is not optional.

Whether to claim at all

Weigh the excess against the cost of the tyres before you start a claim, because on a single cut tyre the excess can easily exceed the replacement. That calculation is yours to make, and it is worth making before you report rather than after, though reporting to the police costs nothing and preserves the option.

If the car is somewhere it cannot stay

A vandalised car is often also an obstruction, which is a separate problem with its own rules. The Highway Code requires you to warn other traffic with hazard lights if your vehicle is causing an obstruction, and to place a warning triangle at least 45 metres behind it on ordinary roads — never on a motorway. On roads other than motorways you should only remove an obstruction if it is safe to do so.

If the car is on a red route, a clearway or in a bay it cannot legally occupy, arrange recovery or replacement promptly and keep a record of when you reported it and when help was arranged. I could not find any published exemption that protects a vandalised vehicle from parking enforcement, so do not rely on one existing; evidence that you acted quickly is a better position than an assumption of immunity.

If it happens where you live

Tell the police if it has happened before, even if you did not report the earlier incidents. A single slashed tyre and a third one in six months are different problems, and the police can only see a pattern they have been told about. Repeat incidents in one street are also the kind of thing that changes how an area is looked at.

Practical things worth doing if this is not the first time:

• Report every incident, however minor, so there is a record with dates attached.
• Ask neighbours whether they have been affected, since several reports carry more weight than one.
• Check whether any nearby camera covers where you park, and ask promptly, because footage is usually overwritten within days.
• Consider parking somewhere different or better lit, which is unsatisfying advice but genuinely effective.

Keep your own dated record too. Insurers and police both work from what can be evidenced, and a list of dates with photographs attached is worth considerably more than a recollection that it has happened "a few times".

Getting the car moving again

With one tyre cut and a usable spare, this is a wheel change. With two or more cut, it is not, because no car carries two spares, and multiple cuts are common precisely because the person doing it did not stop at one.

Either way the cut tyres are replacements rather than repairs, so the question is only where that happens. Having them brought to the car avoids driving on a spare, keeps the damaged tyres in your possession for the claim, and means the vehicle is not sitting on a kerb advertising what happened to it.

For the repair limits in full see what can and cannot be repaired and sidewall damage. If more than one has gone, two flats at once covers why the spare stops helping.

Frequently asked questions