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What happens to the laws being introduced by the EU after Prime Minister May has started the Brexit process by enacting Article 50? Over the next couple of years, called the transition period, the EU will impose laws on all member countries but where does it leave us as we will still be part of the EU for two years after Article 50 is passed through parliament?

Take the European Court of Justice ruling in the Vnuk case. A Slovakian man was injured when a tractor reversed into a ladder that Mr Vnuk was on. Insurers refused to pay up as the accident happened on private land so it was up to Mr Vnuk to sue the driver privately for his injuries.

His claim went through the courts and failed at eac level until it was referred to the European Court of Justice. The European Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that it was compulsory for all vehicles to have insurance, whether on the road or not, and whether used as a vehicle or machine, which should have therefore protected Mr Vnuk.

The EU’s Motor Insurance Directive states that vehicles such as lawnmowers, disability scooters and golf buggies should all carry insurance, much to the annoyance of our own insurance industry. The Government is, as a result, consulting about changes to the Road Traffic Act in order to meet the EU regulations.

Having expressed concerns regarding the cost of conforming to the EU regulations it would seem that as we are expecting to be outside the EU when the changes have been formalised the lawmakers have introduced a ‘sunset’ clause which means that changes to our current laws, as a result of this directive, can be immediately ditched the minute we Brexit. What a waste of time and money.

The question is how many more regulations will be introduced with ‘sunset’ clauses incorporated into the UK laws before we fully exit the EU? And where do we stand when European workers come into the UK to work on farms and experience similar accidents, will we need regulations to cover UK workers and others to cover EU workers and will UK workers be happy to be refused the same protection as those working in EU countries? And so my concerns about the full implications of Brexit continue. By Graham Hill

If, like me, you are worried about the damage that pollution is doing to our environment and to the health of our children then Brexit carries with it some additional concerns. The Government has lost a legal battle in the High Court against environmental campaigners over pollution levels and now have to take action by drawing up more ambitious plans to reduce emissions.

The ruling by the High Court was the result of an appeal by the Government over a Supreme Court ruling in favour of environmental lawyers, ClientEarth who successfully argued that the Government had continually failed to tackle the national air pollution crisis.

Mr Justice Garnham, presiding over the High Court case, said that the Government had continually failed to take steps to bring the UK into compliance with European pollution laws, and that they should take steps, as soon as possible, to correct the situation. However, this is fine whilst we are within the EU but when we are outside will the Government be as keen as the Europeans to keep pollution under control?

I somehow have my doubts which must be a worry to those of us who believe, unlike president elect Trump, that humans are the biggest contributors to the high pollution levels we see around the world, through the poorly controlled burning of fossil fuels. What a doughnut! By Graham Hill

In the current Health and Safety obsession by the EU and lawmakers in all civilised countries I find this next piece very hard to believe can still happen, especially in the UK. If you are a recent reader of my musings you may not have read the piece I put out regarding the sort of health and safety attitude that existed in the US in the 1970’s.

Briefly, Ford had a car called the Pinto which happened to be the biggest selling ‘sub compact’ car in the US at the time. Unfortunately the design of the car was unsafe, they had placed the fuel tank in such a position that if the car was hit from behind the tank exploded.

More than 500 people died as a result of the Pinto bursting into flames when they were either driving or were a passenger in the car. Many more received severe burn injuries. When a burn victim sued Ford for the faulty design it was uncovered that Ford engineers had known about the problem for many years. But Ford management had carried out a cost – benefit analysis and concluded that it wasn’t worth the $11 per car to fix the problem by recalling all of the cars compared to the cost of recompense payable to the victims.

They believed that if the problem remained unfixed they would face claims from 180 burn victims and the families of 180 victims killed. They placed a monetary value of $67,000 on a burn victim and $200,000 on a death. They added to these costs the cost of replacing the cars. They concluded that if they fixed the problem it would save them $49.5 million in compensation and car replacement costs but the cost of repairing the 12.5 million cars affected would set them back $137.5 million.

So they concluded that the cost of paying out for losses and injuries was a better option than paying out for the cars to be repaired. This of course raised a number of issues that the US Government jumped on and Ford ended up with huge costs and penalties to pay. One would assume that this couldn’t possibly happen again in this day and age with a higher moral obligation placed on companies along with massive legal consequences.

But then I read about the recent problems experienced by Vauxhall Zafira owners. I had seen several YouTube videos of Zafiras catching light and cars being pretty much instantly destroyed. For ages Vauxhall denied the existence of a problem but after 300 Zafiras caught fire they were forced to take a more responsible approach. The problem was found to be in the car’s heating and ventilation system which led to a recall of all Zafiras, known as ‘B’ models on sale between 2005 and 2014.

They originally claimed that the problem had only come to light in 2014, following which they instigated a full recall in December 2015. However, when questioned by MP’s a couple of weeks ago, Peter Hope, customer experience director at Vauxhall, admitted that they had known about the problem as long ago as 2009 when the first fire was reported. Their excuse was that when cars are completely destroyed by fire there is very little evidence left to analyse in order to establish the cause of the fire.

The good news is that unlike the Ford Pinto no-one was even injured but that isn’t the point. At what stage does a car manufacturer take responsibility and carry out a very detailed investigation when consistent things go wrong with one of their car models? The estimated cost of repairs is £33.6 million – tough! Only now, in the month of August 2016 is a further 235,000 Zafiras, as agreed with the DVLA, being recalled to have the fault fixed.

Shame on you Vauxhall for putting customers through all this when it could have been avoided. When Vauxhall denied responsibility drivers no doubt made insurance claims for their losses, paying an excess and losing no claims bonus. This simply isn’t good enough and after making the cars safe again they should prepare a plan to pay those affected compensation, something, according to Peter Hope is not at the moment being considered. What a disgrace! By Graham Hill

Bits & Pieces: a) It seems that insurance companies are finally seeing the benefit of having a dash cam (digital camera fitted to the dashboard, windscreen or behind the rear view mirror) with dash cam maker Nextbase coming to an agreement with insurance comparison website, Constructaquote.com.

They will offer those with a dash cam fitted a 15% discount on insurance taken out through their website. This is particularly beneficial to those who privately finance a car but predominantly use it for business as these cars carry a premium that the 15% will help to neutralise.

b) The Government is looking into the proposals for driverless cars to be used on the streets of the UK. Consultations have started on the implications such as a rewritten Highway Code, street signs and the safety features such as lane departure and emergency braking. You can read the consultations by visiting www.gov.uk/government/consultations.

c) Glass’s Guide, the well known valuation experts, have suggested that the decision to exit the EU won’t affect used car prices till quarter 4 2016 at the earliest. Like most ‘experts’ they predicted the first to suffer would be fuel prices and property prices whilst I predicted – no change in my musings straight after the Brexit vote. Before the vote petrol at my local Tesco was £109.9 pence and yesterday – yep, it was the same! By Graham Hill

As I continue to wrestle with my decision as to whether we should stay in or exit the EU, I read something that kinda proves that the EU isn’t all bad. It’s been a worry of mine for some time as to what happens to all the data being collected as cars become what is being called ‘connected’.

It started with a warning that I issued a couple of years ago about your phone book that you upload into the phone memory in your car then forget to delete the numbers before you hand it back at the end of the lease or sell the car on to a dealer or private individual.

I reported a case whereby a premier league footballer’s wife part exchanged her car which contained the phone numbers of A listers which the car dealer then tried to sell on as he considered that he was now owner of the data as he now owned the car. He lost the case but we are now entering the murky world of what I referred to recently as Big Data.

You record your destinations via sat nav and with full connectivity to the Internet in many cars, expected to be in 90% of all new cars by 2020, what happens to your search history and data that is being recorded via your in car Internet connection? Not to mention facts and figures on the way you drive.

It is with regard to personal privacy that the EU has stepped in and tightened up on the controls governing personal data collected via the ‘Connected’ features of your car. Within the new rules laid down by the EU they state, ‘There will be a much higher standard for consent, the definition of what constitutes personal data will change and there will be tougher sanctions for anybody falling foul of the rules.’

The EU has given businesses 2 years to tidy up their act and comply with the new, stricter regime, which has been designed to deal specifically with issues arising from connected products and services, including amongst others, vehicles. Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the European Commission said, ‘Individuals must be empowered; they must know what their rights are and know how to defend their rights if they feel they are not being respected.’

Whilst the rules apply to personal data various experts have suggested that the rules will extend to virtually all data as the definition of personal data is changing. According to legal expert Stephen Appt, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) makes it clear that information is considered to be personal data whenever individuals can be identified by online identifiers, including GPS information. Appt, a partner at Pinsent Masons, added, ‘Data that identifies drivers indirectly would be considered personal data.’

So in essence I agree with these moves as individuals need to be protected but it raises two questions in my mind. Firstly would our own Government have tackled this problem and if they did would they impose stronger or weaker rules than the EU? But taking this one step further if we voted out and took back control over our regulations and took a weaker approach would we still be able to sell into Europe?

I would suggest that unless we met their privacy regulations we wouldn’t be able to. So we will have to comply whether we are in or out or we couldn’t sell into our largest market, Europe. It seems to me that we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Take another example. If we decided that say the safety standards set down by the EU on fridges was too low and decided to improve the safety adding a £20 cost per fridge would our own manufacturers thank the Government?

We would no longer be competitive in Europe because of the added cost and it makes no difference anyway as the safety rules laid down by the EU represent a minimum, there is nothing to stop the UK, if we remain in, improving on the minimum safety standard if we felt it was necessary.

Of course we could drop the safety standard of fridges made in the UK if we were out but we wouldn’t sell any into Europe because they no longer complied and I would suggest that we would struggle to sell them elsewhere in the world as European manufacturers would declare UK product as inferior. Confused – yes I certainly am! But congratulations to the EU for tackling this growing privacy problem. By Graham Hill

Did you know that 80% of traffic lights could be scrapped without any detrimental affect on traffic flow? So says a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). They could be replaced by filter-in-turn or all-way give way layouts at junctions (no I haven’t a clue either).

According to the report if we ditched all the unnecessary traffic lights we would avoid unnecessary delays and if this saved 2 minutes per trip it is estimated that the move would save the economy £16 billion a year. The study found that the number of traffic lights had increased by a staggering 25% since 2000.

In addition the report suggested that many bus lanes, cycle lanes, speed cameras and parking restrictions should go also – wow I’m with them on these thoughts. Cities in Germany and the Netherlands have already ditched 80% of their traffic lights successfully and the IEA believes that we could do the same.

The IEA finishes by saying, ‘The affect of these measures puts an enormous burden on the UK economy, It also imposes huge costs on road users, tax payers and communities.’ And I for one agree! By Graham Hill

The EU Commission had already made it clear that emission testing would be tightened up from 2017 but they have now announced that they will be going several steps further. As a result of growing mistrust of the emissions testing procedures which were to reflect real life motoring conditions by 2017 the Commission has announced a number of additional rules.

First of all, instead of randomly selecting cars off production lines to test they will in future be selected from cars that are already on sale as well as cars from production lines. Recalls will be issued if cars are found to emit different levels of regulated emissions than those suggested by the manufacturer. Financial ties between European test centres and the manufacturers will be cut (I didn’t know there were any), thus making the system fairer.

It seemed that testing could be carried out in any country within the EU in the past for it to be accepted across the EU. So manufacturers were having cars tested at centres where they knew controls were more lax. This is being address with greater controls being imposed upon the test centres.

The Commission is also applying for additional powers to suspend, restrict or withdraw the number of services that a test centre can offer if it is performing at a less than acceptable level. The Commission is also pushing for access to new car ‘software protocols’ and the ability to restrict the use of such devices as the ‘defeat device’ used by VW. I’d have thought these sorts of devices should be banned rather than just restricted!

Whilst it seemed to be a move in the right direction there were some observers who believed the new rules still ‘lacked teeth’. In a damning statement Greg Archer, green vehicles director at campaign group Transport & Environment said, ‘Without the threat of future EU sanctions, it will be  mission impossible to break the strong bond between national regulators and their car makers that has protected the industry but at the cost of higher emissions.’

And I thought I was outspoken! The EU Parliament is now considering the proposals ahead of a debate and vote. If approved the new rules will come into force immediately = as if that could happen! Ridiculous! By Graham Hill