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When my kids were young they could think of nothing more exciting on a trip than to be dropped into the boot of the car with a couple of cushions, a tube of Smarties each and a torch. These days you have to spend a fortune of Isofix adapted forward and backward baby seats followed by specially adapted seatbelts and child seats until they reach 22 Read more »

Who are EuroNCAP? Do you know? Well it turns out that far too few people do so they are on a mission to become more visible. They are a group formed in 1997 by the Transport Research Laboratory and they are the organisation that crash tests every new car to award it safety stars from the driver’s perspective, passenger perspective and pedestrian perspective. Over the years many companies have insisted upon Read more »

Fears are growing regarding the safety of cars on our roads as drivers put off service and maintenance work in order to save some money during the recession. There has also been an increase in employees either asking to be put on a cash for cars scheme or for their employers to introduce a scheme. It is felt the motives are purely financial with employees looking to downsize their car and pocket what equates to an Read more »

There are a number of vehicle recalls each year, some of which are fairly minor causing no more than an irritation whilst others are much more serious which could result in injury. One of the latest recalls was issued by Ford on 29,000 Focuses for a potential overheating problem in the cooling fan to be rectified. The warning read: Focus (potential overheating/fire risk), models from 20/02/04 – 31/05/06. Read more »

Whilst on the subject of safety and collision avoidance, I’m often asked what certain expressions mean when I mention them in car specs that I send out in my video car deal of the week. So to help out here are a few quick summaries:

 ABS: Anti Lock Braking system, this prevents the wheels from locking under heavy braking. The disc pads grip the disc, then release then grip again but very fast thus preventing a skid and allowing the driver to steer whilst braking without skidding. It sounds like a machine gun when it operates.

EBD or EBFD: Electronic Brakeforce Distribution, this system varies the amount Read more »

If you are not aware of ESP or Electronic Stability Program (also known as ESC Electronic Stability Control) you must be new to my newsletter and never watched one of my new car videos. If you are aware of ESP you will know that I go on about it constantly because I truly believe that it should be fitted as standard on all cars now and not in a few years (2014) as has now been insisted upon by the EC. Around the world 1.4 million people die in Read more »

Just as I see many more manufacturers embrace the ESP/ESC safety systems that help you to avoid an accident a new one emerges called FlexRay which is apparently set to become the new standard in safety devices moving us closer to the time when we don’t actually have to drive cars, just programme them and they get on and do it whilst we sit back and enjoy our freshly brewed Earl Grey and munch on a few choccy Hob Nobs whilst reading my blog FAQ’s received via your communications interface. It may all seem Read more »

It wasn’t long ago when I advised drivers to check the settings of their head restraints in order to prevent one of the most common driving injuries, whiplash. Well it now turns out that EuroNCAP, the body that checks the safety of every new car, now has a new test that it carries out on seats to check their ability to prevent whiplash. It showed that 8 new cars launched in 2008 failed the new test including some surprises, Ford Kuga, Citroen C5 and Peugeot 308CC. These cars were given a ‘red rating’ which meant Read more »

Some good news on the ESC (Electronic Stability Control) front. The EC has moved to make ESC compulsory on all new cars. The bad news is that the system will only be phased in from 2012 and made compulsory from 2014. You will recall that this is the system that checks your speed vs angle of steering and slows you down if you are about to go into a skid, it also applies power and/or braking to the wheels that are gripping. It’s an amazing system that was Read more »

As regular readers will know I am a great supporter of Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and would like to see it fitted to all new cars as it is so much more important than ABS which is now fitted as standard on all cars sold in the UK. The European Commission proposed that by 2012 all new cars should have ESC fitted as standard. However the results of a recent EU wide survey showed Read more »