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Well yah, but that implies that a service truck would have already arrived to offer some sort of warning and/or protection from a collision. You could easily be slammed in the hour that you're sitting in the car pulling your peter waiting for roadside assistance, not having either flashing warning lights to alert traffic, or a truck to absorb part of the energy of a collision.
There's no one size fits all answer for this, obviously. Depending on what, and where you drive, a spare might be a waste of time, or an outright necessity.
Edit: Although some people have driven 300 years and seventeen trillion miles without ever having [enter problem du jour here], it doesn't mean that sometimes **** doesn't just happen, independent of the standard automotive forum assignment of blame (operator error, bad maintenance, wrong choice of car, general stupidity, ignorance, etc).
I just read this today. Not even an inflatable doughnut to get you back home. Manufacturers claim they are doing this to save gas mileage. Thats BS.
So what? Most people just call AAA and they will come and fix it faster then they could change it themselves.
I do have a spare tire in my car, but no jack. I have had probably a dozen flat tires in my lifetime. In all cases I was able to drive to a gas station and refill it, or in the worst cases I drove slowly on the rim directly to a tire shop and bought a new tire.
Yeah, and the hole that the fixaflat plugged didn't ruin the tire, right? Come on, that's a reach. You can't reliably plug a tire, if it gets a hole in it, it's done.
That's not really true. Tire Rack has a good article on how to plug a tire properly - long story short you have to dismount the tire and put in a "mushroom" type plug from inside. It's true that a plugged tire drops one level in effective speed rating - so a V goes to an effective H rating - for most American drivers this isn't an issue.
I have used spray can fix-a-flat and then taken the tire off the rim and plugged it with a mushroom type plug. There is a good bit of "goop" you need to clean out of the tire, but I mean BFD.
For "blue road" service on my own cars, (as opposed to one the wife drives much) I have done the "rope" type patch or just left fix-a-flat in the tire, if it was getting down in tread and I would replace it soon anyway.
Ill never have a car as my primary car, without a spare. A friend went through this not to long ago (325) and not having a spare ruined a few vacations and cost him lots of money. Till the end of that lease afterward, he picked up a spare ebay wheel to go in the trunk. Even my toy cars, ive come up with a 5th wheel for them to match the aftermarket wheels. I like options. Sitting on the side of the road isnt a good option.
That makes sense they would no longer include a spare...
...as so many people are so stupid these days, they don't know how to change a tire! Nor do they seem to know how to read instructions or read the owner's manual to teach themselves to change a tire.
I've seen several "men" lately (on the side of the road) who have called AAA to change their tire for them.
I also met an 18 year old guy who did not know how to check the oil in a car...
The article did go on to say, about 4000 people are killed each year changing their tires. It also said about 700 of these killed were working on their vehicles IN the roadway.
I have always carried a small compressor,and a small tire repair kit with rubber plugs just in case. Have never had to use the repair kit.
My BMW's came with runflat tires. That will get you to the nearest service station for repair of replacement.
On a Sunday? Good luck. Why would someone pay $35,000 for a car whose designed reliability is only expected to get it from one service station to the next? There are plenty of places in the USA that are more than 100 or even 200 miles from the nearest "service station" that has runflat tires that will match your car's set that is open that day, or on any night. In most cases, a runflat cannot (or should not) be repaired, and you're talking replacement, at double the price of a normal tire, if you can find a place to replace it without taking a day or two out of your trip.
For those of you say you "never have a flat", why don't you just buy the much cheaper conventional tires, and not worry about whether you have a spare or not?
Last edited by jtur88; 07-26-2013 at 10:15 PM..
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Was that you weaving in and out in that car in front of me the other day? 
