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It would seem that magistrates have gone soft, as a result of the recession, if you have accidentally reached the automatic driving ban of 12 points on your licence. Some say this is wrong and that the ban should be automatically imposed, especially in extreme cases like the driver who was allowed to keep his licence even after he amassed 54 Read more »

The gap is starting to open up between petrol and diesel at the pumps again, pushing drivers towards petrol cars. There is also continued concern that people that take diesels fitted with particulate filters, as all new diesel cars have to have fitted, do not understand that they need to run the car at over 50mph for at least 20 minutes in one session per month in order to create the chemical reaction that clears out the filter. If this isn’t done the filter clogs and needs to be replaced costing hundreds of Read more »

Auto Express has launched a campaign to force manufacturers to disclose known problems with their cars. At the moment the manufacturers only have to make public known safety faults that are subject to recall. For all other problems, such as reliability issues, these do not have to be made public. The AA, RAC and Retail Motor Industry Federation have all joined with Auto Express to put pressure on manufacturers to make public their technical service bulletins – the documents that detail the Read more »

As most cars have in car computers fitted these days wouldn’t it be a great option to have incorporated, whereby you input the cost per litre of the fuel that you put into your car and at the end of each journey or possibly during the journey, it showed you the cost of the fuel that you’ve used. Now wouldn’t that stop a few unnecessary trips, especially short trips that might return on 10 miles to the gallon compared with the average of say 40mpg. Any views? By Graham Hill

If you are driving behind a car and it seems to be wandering across the road as though the driver had been drinking, it may not be the driver it may just be the car that’s a little worse for wear! Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a biofuel from whisky by-products. Called biobutanol it’s 30% more powerful than ethanol and is created out of two waste products: ‘pot ale’ from copper stills and Read more »

After all the warnings of sending texts whilst driving it was just a matter of time before ‘tweeting’ came under the spotlight. That warning has been issued following the death of a driver who was found to be tweeting whilst driving. The driver, a US plastic surgeon, was tweeting about his dog whilst driving when he had a fatal accident. Frank Ryan, the driver, was driving his Jeep Wrangler along Pacific Coast Highway in Read more »

As if by magic, after writing the earlier gadget of the week article, I immediately read about the car manufacturers up in arms because the EU has just added another item of safety technology to their growing list of compulsory fitments, you guessed it Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS). They feel it is unnecessary and adds around £250 to the cost of the car (methinks they should pop down to Maplins). Whilst the manufacturers argue the toss over whether this addition will actually save Read more »

Drug driving, which is considered as dangerous as drink driving and punishable by exactly the same penalties, is being targeted by the police as an area where more accurate technology is needed. As a result a new ‘drugalyser’ has been developed and will be in all police stations from 2012. The analyser will test drivers’ saliva and make it easier for police to prosecute drivers who drive whilst high on illegal substances Read more »

This week our gadget of the week should be called dopy gadget of the week or more money than sense gadget of the week. It’s in fact a polish for your car, priced at, wait for it, £275 for a 270ml pot or a pound a millilitre! The polish is Raceglaze’s Signature Black Label Wax which contains a high content of carnauba, apparently one of the most prized car care products – bit of an understatement that one! But the best is Read more »

Volvo are about to move the breathalyzer onto another level. They currently have a system called the Alcoguard breathalyser whereby you have to blow into it and be below the legal limit before you are able to start the car. The new system relies upon the driver’s sweat to monitor the level of alcohol in the system. The newly developed system is still at an early stage but Chris Wailes of Volvo said that the new technology Read more »