Yes, GB, I was a cub, then a boyscout, then a senior scout and I learned all about Be Prepared. I also carry two strips of carpet in the 'boot' to put under the wheels when starting off on ice, although I now have an all wheel drive car with winter tyres that never gets stuck. Habit, I guess; someday I might meet someone who needs them.

I too followed a car with a half down tyre and when it was stopped at the traffic lights I went and told the driver. The driver was a young woman and could have taken fright, but she pulled into the nearby filling station where they have an air line.

I have developed a feeling for the handling of the car and if I'm not sure I loosen my grip on the steering wheel and see if the steering pulls to one side. One dark evening a number of us visited a friend and parked outside his house. A drunken or drugged neighbour loosened the Schrader valve on one of the tyres of two of our cars. I could feel straight away that something was wrong and pulled over. I always carry a torch, a Schrader key, a pressure guage and the tyre pump that my dad gave to me during the 1950s so I was able to do something.

When I was in South Africa I followed for many miles a line cut into the road surface by the wheel rim of a heavily loaded vehicle with a flat tyre - or maybe no tyre at all.