5 hours ago, OldBoyScout said:

am wondering whether front tyres are more likely to get punctured than rear tyres,

 

At least a couple of reasons I can think of that make rear tyres more susceptible to puncturing;

1. The front tyres when coming across road debris will generally find it lying down, parallel to the road surface (unless tailgating very close behind another vehicle). The front tyres will tend to disturb any such debris and kick it up into random orientations by the time the rear tyres arrive at it. So a screw/nail etc. that the front tyre ran over harmlessly  may be at a very aggressive angle for the rear.

2. Because the rear wheels don't steer, the inner shoulders tend to get looked at far less often than those of the fronts, which are sometimes very visible if parked with the steering well off centre.

For this reason, the inner shoulders and whole inner half of the rear tread can get very worn without the average motorist noticing. The less tread there is, the easier to perforate the tyre; sometimes it'll happen all by itself if left long enough. Not that uncommon for MOT testers to discover rears that are down to the wire on the inner shoulder.

 

15 hours ago, freemansteve said:

who wants 2 visits to a boring tyre place when you can do it in one?  I'd rather have an extra hour or two in the garden with a drink

You need a better tyre place. I needed 4 at once on my Octy, 2 gubbed, 1 slow puncture and no intention of having 3 new and a half-worn Dunlop. 5 fitters, including the depot manager descended, and 15 minutes later I was leaving with 4 new tyres, fitted and balanced (despite only having one balancing machine in the depot).

Good article on why surprisingly it is probably more important to have more tread on the rear tyres overall:

https://www.oponeo.co.uk/blog/better-tyres-in-the-front-or-back-test-results

3 hours ago, Piers314 said:

Good article on why surprisingly it is probably more important to have more tread on the rear tyres overall:

https://www.oponeo.co.uk/blog/better-tyres-in-the-front-or-back-test-results

Understeer = probably controllable by most decent drivers

Oversteer = probably a crash