Fleets are being urged to equip their drivers with service kits enabling them to easily check tyre pressure, tread and condition as new figures highlight the potentially fatal risk of cars and commercial vehicles fitted with illegal tyres.

According to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, tyre defects are one of the major causes of MOT failure among cars and vans with available figures suggesting 2.2 million vehicles annually fall foul of checks due to tyre-related issues.

Illegal, defective or under-inflated tyres are the single largest vehicle-related defect recorded by police officers as a contributory factor in road traffic collisions.

The Department for Transport’s Reported Road Casualties Great Britain 2015 analysis reveals defective tyres were a contributory factor in crashes that resulted in 16 deaths, 146 people being seriously injured and 746 people slightly injured.

“Drivers spending just a few minutes of their time checking their tyres at home, or in a car park or when filling up with fuel could be the difference between life and death,” said Martyn Nash, chairman of vGroup.

vGroup provides motor accessory essentials and has already supplied more than 96,000 tyre service kits to fleets this year.

As the annual October National Tyre Safety Month draws to a close, TyreSafe, the not-for-profit organisation that promotes it, has calculated that more than 10 million tyres currently fitted to vehicles could be illegal.