Is it safe to drive today?
Live weather, road incidents and air quality, scored against your car and tyres. Any of 219 NZ towns, now or at a time you pick.
Pick your town and the report turns live weather, road incidents and air quality into a driving score out of 100, then works out stopping distances and a following gap for your car and tyres. 219 NZ towns, scored for right now or any hour today. The quick chip you see after picking a town is the town baseline: an average car on average tyres. The full report scores your set-up, and the gap between the two numbers is what your vehicle and tyres are worth today.
- Reading the score: 75 and up is a normal day, 55 to 74 drive with care, 35 to 54 caution, under 35 slow down and think about whether the trip can wait. The bands in full.
- Your tyres move the score: set the wet grip grade from the EU label and the tread from a depth gauge, and the report recalculates everything for your actual rubber.
- The distances are validated physics: stopping figures come from the same UBPS engine our braking simulator runs, checked against 974 catalogued braking tests.
- Privacy: the report runs in your browser. Your settings and score history stay on your device and nothing you enter is sent to us.
In this guide
Start hereHow it works
Every time you generate a report the tool pulls three live feeds for your town: the weather and air quality from Open-Meteo, and current road incidents within 80 km from Waka Kotahi NZTA. Twelve weather and road factors are weighed against each other, from rain rate and wind gusts to visibility, frost risk and the hour of the day, and the result is one score out of 100.
Under the score, the report gets specific about your car: stopping distances from 50, 80 and 100 km/h on today's road, the following gap to hold, aquaplaning speed for your tyre pressure, tyre pressure change from the temperature, the next 12 hours scored hour by hour, and a 6-day outlook. Pick a different hour with the time picker to score the school run or the drive home before you leave.
Two numbers matter more than the rest. The quick chip after you pick a town is the town baseline: an average car on average tyres, right now. The full report is your number. When your score sits below the baseline, the report tells you exactly what the difference costs and where it comes from.
Your tyresSetting your tyres: the two numbers that move the score
Reports assume an average tyre: EU wet grip grade C with 4 mm of tread. If you know your own two numbers the report stops being generic. On the current EU tyre label, wet grip is rated A to E, and the difference is not cosmetic: from 80 km/h in the wet, a grade A tyre pulls up around a bus length before a grade E.
Where to find your numbers:
- Wet grip grade: on the label of any tyre bought new, on the EU database via the label's QR code, or on the product page where the tyre carries one: many tyres in our range show it, though plenty of light truck, mud terrain and older commercial sizes are never EU labelled at all. No label? Leave it at C.
- Tread depth: a $10 depth gauge, or judge it by eye against our tread depth photo gallery. New is about 8 mm, the legal minimum is 1.5 mm, and wet grip falls away fast below 4 mm.
- Tyre age: in Advanced Mode. Read the date from the sidewall with the DOT code decoder.
- Everything else: Advanced Mode covers tyre type, width, pressure, pattern, ABS, AEB, stability control, passengers and cargo.
Tested your reactions on our brake reaction test in the last 24 hours? The report uses your measured reaction time instead of the 1.5 second average.
The scoreReading the report
The score bands, and what we mean by them:
| Score | Band | Badge | In practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| 75 to 100 | Excellent | GO | A normal day. Standard 2 second following gap. |
| 55 to 74 | Good | GO | Drive with care. Something is working against you, usually rain or wind. Stretch the gap. |
| 35 to 54 | Moderate | CAUTION | Caution advised. Slow down, double the gap, lights on. |
| 18 to 34 | Poor | SLOW | Hard conditions. Ask whether the trip can wait an hour; the hourly strip will tell you. |
| Under 18 | Severe | AVOID | Genuinely dangerous. If you must drive, treat it as an event. |
The stopping distance card splits your figure into reaction distance (the metres you travel before touching the pedal) and braking distance (the physics of your tyres on today's surface), and shows the same stop on a dry road for contrast. The what-if grid under it prices each change: dry road, grade A tyres, new tread, no load.
The following gap starts at the 2 second rule and stretches with the conditions, up to 6 times longer on ice. It also grows if you are towing or loaded.
Every run is saved to your score history for that town (in your browser only), so after a few checks the report can tell you whether today is normal or an outlier for your area.
AccuracyAccuracy and data
One tool, two kinds of claim, held to two different standards:
The stopping distances are validated physics. They come from the UBPS v3.7.1 braking engine, the same engine behind our braking simulator. Its record: 974 catalogued braking tests from 218 named sources, of which 871 are testable benchmarks, and the engine lands within tolerance on 97.4% of them with a mean error of 6.5%. The full per-surface table, the failing benchmarks and the method are published with the simulator, and every test carries its source.
The safety score is judgement built on that physics. There is no international standard for "how safe is today out of 100", so the score is our weighing of twelve live weather and road factors against each other. We publish the factor breakdown inside every report, so you can always see why the number is what it is and disagree with it.
The live feeds: weather and air quality from Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0), road incidents from Waka Kotahi NZTA, refreshed every time you generate. Aquaplaning speeds use the NASA hydroplaning formula on your actual tyre pressure.
FleetsFleet briefing mode
Flick the fleet toggle and the report becomes a one-page morning briefing: a single GO / CAUTION / SLOW / AVOID call taken from the worst leg of the route (depot plus up to two route points), required driver actions in plain language, the key figures, and a print layout with a sign-off grid for the toolbox meeting.
QuestionsCommon questions
Is this a forecast?
Which towns are covered?
Why is my score different from the town baseline?
Does a low score mean don't drive?
Can I share or save a report?
How accurate are the stopping distances?
What data do you collect about me?
Does this replace a WOF or my own judgement?
ReferenceSources
- Weather and air quality: Open-Meteo, licensed CC BY 4.0.
- Road incidents: Waka Kotahi NZTA road events feed, live, filtered to 80 km around your town.
- Braking physics: UBPS v3.7.1. Validation corpus of 974 catalogued braking tests from 218 named sources, published with the braking simulator.
- Wet grip grades: EU Regulation 2020/740 tyre labelling, grades A to E.
- Aquaplaning: NASA hydroplaning research (the pressure-speed relationship).
- Reaction times: peer-reviewed fatigue and distraction research, including Williamson & Feyer (2000).
The score said your tyres cost you points?
Then the cheapest safety upgrade you can buy is the one the report already priced for you. Where a tyre carries an EU wet grip grade we show it, and where it does not we will tell you straight how it behaves in the wet.
(07) 573 9090 · Te Puke, Bay of Plenty
General guidance based on published standards and our own workshop data — reliable but hand-compiled and not guaranteed error-free. Spot something wrong? Email email@tyredispatch.co.nz and we'll fix it.