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Conservative MP Sir Greg Knight has put forward a proposal to Transport Minister, John Hayes to turn off traffic lights on certain junctions at non busy times.

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I understand where he is coming from as I’m sure you do having spent what seems like ages stuck at a set of traffic lights with no other traffic about at all waiting for the lights to turn green. Apparently this isn’t as daft an idea as it might initially sound as it is fairly common in Europe. It saves electricity, it also saves fuel as drivers aren’t kept waiting at lights on tickover waiting for the lights to change.

I saw on our local news a few days ago that they were trialling such an idea in Reading town centre in order to keep busses flowing. The traffic lights were causing busses to bunch up so by the time the busses got out of the town passengers would see 2 or 3 busses all turn up together. By turning the traffic lights off at certain times it was found that busses were spread more evenly.

Whilst it might seem like a good idea Hayes has said that there are no immediate plans to switch off the traffic lights. So another good idea bites the dust! By Graham Hill

If you thank that is dopey, how about the 2,410 drivers who managed to lock a child in their cars resulting in a call out for the AA in 2014. A further 1,014 AA customers managed to lock their pets in their cars with a staggering 40,072 forgetting whether their vehicles ran on petrol or diesel and filled their cars with the wrong fuel. Jeepers!

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Oh and the 1,014 pets weren’t all dogs, they ranged from guinea pigs to snakes. Who would be an AA patrolman? According to the AA it’s not as simple as opening the door to allow the driver to get to their precious pet, they often escape cages and boxes and manage to squeeze into the back of the dashboard requiring the patrolman to dismantle it in order to rescue a pet that was in fact quite comfy where it was.

Who’d have thought you would need a tetanus jab in order to work for the AA? There were an amazing 3 million callouts in 2014. Top of the callout list was batteries at 427,586 followed by tyres at 373,746, lights 131,527, alternator at 106,587 and clutch failure at 103,229. Mondays are the busiest days for the AA with an extra 1,000 callouts over the daily average of 9,337.

Monday 24^th November was the busiest day last year with 14,501 callouts. Bloody interesting eh! The longest recovery was 615 miles from south London to Ross-shire. Amazing! By Graham Hill

Here is part 2 of my safety tips as we count down to winter. I mentioned in my last list of tips the importance of making sure that your screen is clear, not only outside but inside. Clean the inside of your screen regularly with anti mist cleaner.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

My experience is that this still won’t stop the screen from misting up but it makes them clear quicker when you turn on the demister. Remember that in the rain stopping distance is doubled so allow plenty of space between you and the car in front. It is a legal requirement to switch on your headlights (if not automatic) when visibility is less than 100 metres.

Another recommendation is not to use cruise control when driving in the wet. Also if you break down in heavy rain don’t leave your bonnet open, some older drivers and truck drivers would do this to indicate that the vehicle had broken down but this will allow the electrics to get wet and make the job of the recovery man or woman much harder.

For some strange reason Brits don’t understand the full dangers of floods, maybe because it is rare for us to experience really heavy flooding (last year being an exception) so we tend to be somewhat glib. The fact is that a massive 32% of all flood related deaths are by drowning in a vehicle.

Here are some more frightening facts to remember the next time a local stream or small river overflows its banks and you feel safe to drive through it. Two feet of standing water is enough to float a car whilst 12” of water flowing at 6mph is also enough to float an average family car. And if you feel the need to drive through a flood splashing water up into the engine compartment, an egg cup full of water in the combustion chamber can wreck an engine.

OK, onto some water tips. Only drive a car through water that you know isn’t too deep, by that I mean halfway up the wheels. Don’t drive through fast moving water, even if the water is just a small stream. Drive on the highest section of the road, check the camber, this is normally the middle of the road.

If your car is a manual keep the revs high by slipping the clutch whilst in water, it is important to keep your engine running. In deep water you should keep your foot on the accelerator as water will travel up the exhaust pipe if you let the revs drop. In a flood take it in turns if you meet oncoming traffic. Allow them to pass first keeping to the highest part of the road.

Make sure that you test your brakes when you leave the water. Finally in this section I must clear up a misconception regarding SUV’s or commonly known as 4WD cars. They are not amphibious vehicles. They are not safer than a normal saloon car, they won’t offer more protection if you are involved in a crash and they certainly won’t fare any better than any other car if you are driving through a flood.

Last year the AA answered calls from 4,000 motorists who had come to grief in floods. Many had driven through water only to get the car die on them when they drove out with 1,000 still stuck in the middle of the water. The AA has a specialist flood rescue team, known as AA SORT (Special Operations Response Team). They are already on alert as we start to move through autumn to winter.

One of the warnings from the AA, other than don’t believe your SUV is a boat, is don’t ignore statutory ‘Road Closed’ signs. They are there for a reason and certainly avoid driving through anything more than a puddle. By ignoring road closed warnings you could put your insurance at risk.

Water can write off cars or severely damage engines but if you ignored a warning saying that a road was closed the insurer could avoid paying out on a claim. So greater care is needed and take no risks. Water can be a killer. More next time so watch this space. By Graham Hill

When people move house they tend to look for certain things in the area into which they are planning to move. Ease of access, closeness to schools with high teaching standards, where the shops are, likelihood of flooding etc. etc. But it is felt that a new credential is starting to surface, as a result of which those crazy girls and boys at Confused.com have carried out a survey in order to help.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

What is this new credential? Obviously it is the greenness of your nearest town or city. What they did was look at every car  registered to an area and calculated the average CO2 emissions figure.

Now I have to say girls and boys this isn’t the most scientific way of arriving at the greenest and dirtiest towns and cities across the land but it is a start and must have nicely filled a few otherwise boring days with something productive and incredibly useful (better than sitting in front of your PC’s playing Candy Crush – just).

In terms of cities, and according to Confused.com, London is the worst of all for CO2 emissions, followed by St Albans (is that a city?) then Brighton & Hove. This is what Gemma Stanbury, head of motor at Confused.com, had to say, ‘With so many Brits relying on their cars for work and other commitments, it’s unrealistic to think that people will be able to do without their cars.

But it’s encouraging to see that many drivers are making an effort to become greener.’ Are they? I have to say Gemma that I don’t have many clients that make their final decision based on the car’s CO2 unless they are looking at the benefit in kind implications which is more of a financial decision rather than a ‘save their local environment’ decision.

In case you are at all interested here are the vitally important stats in the event you are considering a move in the near future:

UKIP’s Nigel Farage may believe that he is onto a winner by fighting the general election on immigration policy, Labour think the same about the Health Service and Cameron on the Economy whilst Nick Clegg will no doubt fight on the first thing that comes to mind!

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

But according to a latest survey they are all off beam. It seems that when Auto Express polled over 1,000 drivers they felt the most important two things that had to be addressed by the various parties, vying for your vote, were reduced fuel prices (55%) and increased speed limits (9%).

It’s true, if any of the parties are to succeed in their efforts to entice motorist voters, they should have clear policies on the aforementioned. Unfortunately, when Auto Express contacted the 4 main parties none had a specific policy for addressing these vote winning issues. For a long time now Governments have attempted to entice people onto public transport but with few exceptions they have generally failed.

We still love our cars and for many the car is essential in order to get to work or get the kids to school. So whichever party can solve the problem of continually spiralling motoring costs and added taxes to make motoring more affordable would certainly notice a swing in their favour (ooer missus). In the words of Andy Sylvester of the Tax Payers Alliance, ‘…it’s not acceptable for the Treasury to use people picking up their children or heading to work as cash cows.’

It did not surprise the Auto Express that drivers would want lower fuel costs but it came as a bit of a surprise to see that drivers wanted speed limits on certain roads increased. What do you think? Answers on a post card to Nigel Farage. By Graham Hill

Bits & Pieces: Halfords Autocentres found in a survey that a third of motorists believed that kicking tyres was sufficient to check whether tyres were safely inflated. Men are more likely to use this test (42%) compared to women (30%). Are they nuts or what?

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Have you ever wondered how drivers of fighter jets keep their windscreens clear? No, nor me but it may be that the technology used on jets could replace windscreen wipers. They use frequency waves to keep the windscreen clear and this technology is being developed by McLaren and could ultimately find its way onto production cars. Especially when it was revealed that this technology could be mass produced for as little as £10 per car. Congestion is costing drivers a fortune according to traffic information company Inrix and the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Gridlock in the UK is costing households £4.4 billion each year with London accounting for £2 billion. By Graham Hill

Years ago I was group general manager for a reasonable sized PLC. I was responsible for a large number of departments including IT, general admin, cost and management accounting,  personnel (known as HR these days), health and safety and much more including our fleet department responsible for over 700 vehicles.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

At the time Peugeot had introduced some major new development in the area of diesel cars, in the past diesels were mainly fitted into vans and trucks. They were still a bit noisy, lacked a bit of low end power, especially the non turbo versions – 0-60 in a week and a half and filling up with diesel meant you stank of the stuff until it wore off 5 days later!

But being a Cost and Management Accountant I crunched the figures and decided that company cars should all be diesel, except the main board of directors and me! The staff kicked off, as did their managers and directors, but I was having none of it. The figures didn’t lie so the drivers had diesel imposed upon them, after all when is a company ever run as a democracy – good grief!

Constantly I would hear the argument that I should be driving a diesel and I would use every reason under the sun until it came down to the fact that I simply didn’t want to. Now I was reminded of this situation when I read that the Government have finally agreed to include 150 electric vehicles in their fleet of cars used to ferry ministers around. The £5 million scheme is expected to extend to councils, the police force and the NHS.

Considering the government has been pushing EV’s for 5 years why has it taken so long to lead the way? I could understand if this was in the 70’s and the government was a company but they are a democracy for goodness sake! With this new initiative led by the Government to push more of us into EV’s, will I be changing my car next year for an electric car? The hell I will, only just started driving diesels! Have a word! By Graham Hill

I am often asked why manufacturers have included things like stop/start technology and are hell bent on reducing engine sizes to that fitted to a 1960’s moped? Are they all becoming amazingly environmentally responsible? Well I’m sure some manufacturers would argue that they are becoming more responsible and are concerned about the environment but I would suspect that it is more to do with cash!

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Or more important fines that will be imposed by the EU if the manufacturers don’t meet CO2 emission targets. And they won’t be pussy footing about, they are set to impose fines of millions of Euros so it is important that the manufacturers tow the line. But how is the ‘average’ CO2 being calculated?

It isn’t as simple as one would think? The obvious suggestion is to take the total cars sold x their individual CO2 output then divided back by the number of cars sold. If you thought this, you would be wrong because it would be unfair on manufacturers of prestige cars compared to those who make predominantly small cars.

The answer was to build in each car’s weight into the equation. As a result Business Car applied the rules to the top 20 manufacturers to see who was producing the greenest cars and which manufacturers were meeting the CO2 targets for their range. Surprisingly no manufacturers were on target but they listed the top manufacturers as follows with their achievement compared to target:

By Graham Hill

OK got my angry hat on so watch out! If it’s not APR it’s bloody MPG. I’m sick to death of the ridiculous arguments over MPG and I’m even more angry to read this week that the EU is to poke their nose into our affairs, yet again, and legislate on the way MPG figures are calculated.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

They are set to demand that vehicle emission and economy tests be carried out on public roads rather than in laboratories. I thought it was dopey enough when What Car decided to carry out their own tests on cars to establish a more ‘realistic’ MPG but simply ignored this idiocy as a ploy to sell more magazines but it’s now getting ridiculous.

First of all expect your road fund licence cost to increase along with your benefit in kind tax as it will show an increase in CO2 emissions but let me turn to MPG, which is about as accurate a measure as APR and Brake Horsepower. I think we would all agree that the MPG, achieved in a laboratory, under very strict test conditions, will not be achievable under normal driving conditions.

So we are all agreed so far. And MPG can vary as a result of the road conditions, the condition of the car and most important of all the way we drive. Agreed? So with such a mash up of so many factors it is virtually impossible to come up with a definitive MPG. Ask any driver how they drive and they will come up with numerous different descriptions, let’s think of a few, carefully, fast, slowly, safely, quickly, with care, legally, illegally, cautiously, erratically, carelessly, considerately and like a rabid monkey.

The fact is that we all drive differently, not only to each other but also in different road conditions. Some drivers drive more carefully when it is raining or if there is ice about whilst others see these conditions as sent to test their rally driving skills affecting the fuel consumption substantially.

Poor service and maintenance of the car can affect fuel consumption as can worn tyres or incorrectly inflated tyres which can make a difference of up to 15% in fuel consumption. Braking hard, braking late, racing away from traffic lights can all affect fuel consumption, even having a window open, continual use of air conditioning or the fitting of a roof rack can affect the fuel you use as well as carrying passengers and/or a load of unnecessary or even necessary weight in the boot.

Cars are also not manufactured with the same precision as a Swiss watch, the mechanics will vary slightly between identical cars produced on the same day providing different fuel consumption. I think you get the gist, it is absolutely impossible to establish ‘accurate’ real life fuel consumption figures for all the reasons mentioned. So why are we about to spend a fortune trying to fix something that ‘aint broke. At least with the way MPG figures are established at the moment all cars are tested consistently in laboratories.

The figures may not reflect genuine real life conditions but they provide a means to compare different makes and models of cars. So if your car choice is between a Ford Fiesta or a Vauxhall Corsa you will find that the Government controlled average on the Fiesta is 54.3mpg whilst that on the Corsa is 51.4mpg. So whilst you probably won’t achieve either figure when you drive the cars the Fiesta is likely to be a little better than the Corsa. So to change the method now would be a nonsense and a waste of money.

What inspectors found when they checked the way manufacturers established their MPG figures was doors being taped up and tests being carried out on very smooth surfaces. This is where action needed to be taken so that all tests are identical and we certainly don’t need the Europeans poking about and instructing us on how we should do things!

Oh and if it was possible to ‘manipulate’ the figures under controlled conditions in a laboratory I can only imagine the manipulation that will go on when attempting to replicate real life driving conditions. Nonsense, absolute bloody nonsense! By Graham Hill

Sadly we are coming to the end of what wasn’t a bad summer other than August that was complete rubbish! Nights are drawing in and whilst we are still enjoying some late sunshine we should be making plans for the winter months ahead.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Fleet News has provided a few pointers and given us a few things to think about. Inevitably there will be a few days when it will be difficult, if not impossible, to either drive to work or use public transport (bit of wind, snow, leaves on the train line, volcanoes erupting, landslides etc.) so do you have a back up plan that enables you and/or staff to work from home in the case of an emergency?

Don’t forget if you employ staff you are responsible for their health and safety and could leave yourself exposed if you insist they come to work when the authorities or experts have advised against it. With regard to your car, have you considered swapping to winter tyres to reduce tyre wear and increase grip. Many of the national tyre fitters now offer a service whereby they will swap over tyres for you between summer and winter and store your summer tyres till spring.

Fleet News also suggest that you consider 4WD cars but I disagree. I don’t recall one day last winter when a 4WD car would have avoided taking any time off work and I have to say that unless you have taken a 4WD course the chances are that you will be no better off driving a 4WD car than a 2WD car. Oh and a little tip if you are stuck in snow, try letting a little air out of the drive tyres to increase grip or better still buy a set of snow chains and a spade to dig yourself out.

Make sure that your car has been serviced and there is enough anti freeze in your radiator and plenty in your windscreen wash. In fact make up some anti-freeze screen wash and keep it in a bottle in the boot, it is so easy to run out of screen wash on a trip and end up not being able to see out of the windscreen. Give yourself a few minutes to sit in the car with the engine running in order to warm up the heater.

If it is cold or raining and you drive straight off you will find the windscreen heavily misting up before it starts to demist making it impossible to see where you are going. Remember it is an offence to drive a car if you cannot see through the screen due to either dirt or mist. Oh and another tip, get yourself some Marigold rubber gloves and stick them in the boot.

Snow chain at the front wheel. Photographer: Devchonka. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The best type of gloves to wear when clearing snow or frost off the car or even to wear when fitting snow chains or digging out the snow. They are totally waterproof and surprisingly warm. I’ll add a few more tips into my next newsletter as the countdown to winter continues. There are lots more tips to come so make sure you read them and stay safe! By Graham Hill