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It is now getting ridiculous. How long are we going to allow local Government to demonise diesel and force drivers to pay unfair penalties for driving cars that just a couple of years ago the Government was encouraging consumers and businesses to drive?

There is now little to choose between diesel and petrol cars when it comes to environmental damage. Last year saw CO2 output from cars rise for the first time since records began and for the first time in years we saw warnings issued about the damage that petrol cars could be causing to the Ozone layer as a result of increased CO2.

And with some particulate filters believed to allow zero soot emissions from the exhaust of diesel cars it seems ridiculous to demonise the cars and punish the drivers the way that local authorities do. London councils are leading the way when it comes to hating diesel cars (or loving them in terms of increased income).

Charging extra for older (pre-2005) cars to enter the central London congestion charge area may seem to make a little bit of sense but some boroughs charge premiums for parking permits for diesels irrespective of their age.

Merton charges an annual surcharge of £115 for all diesel cars, Islington is £99.65 and Hackney is £50. Kensington and Chelsea and Lambeth charge £43 and £40 respectively for pre-Euro 6 diesels. Camden and Barnet charge a surcharge on all diesels.

The problem is that this unjustified surcharge could well spread across the rest of the UK as local authorities see the opportunity to rip off diesel drivers and add to their income.  By Graham Hill

It seems that a lot of claims could be turned down because drivers aren’t making complete and honest returns on their insurance proposal forms.

Saying that a car is stored in a garage overnight when there isn’t enough space to store a bike in your garage could cause a claim to be rejected. It now seems that even silly things can lead to an insurance company rejecting a perfectly normal claim.

In some extreme examples, explained by one of my colleagues on Rip Off Britain, an insurer could reject a claim because you didn’t mention that the car was fitted with a tow bar or a roof or cycle rack. Even if the part fitted had nothing to do with the accident you could still have a claim thrown out.

The most ridiculous and extreme examples include the fixing of stickers and say company adverts or logos, regarded as ‘adjustments to the bodywork’. So be warned, better to advise than not. By Graham Hill

As you get older it’s pretty common knowledge that you become more grumpy. I like to think that I’m not grumpy but I probably am.

However, alongside being grumpy – or not in my case, I find myself worrying more about things around us than I ever did when I was younger.

I worry about the health service, possibly because I’m no doubt getting closer to the time when I could become reliant on it. I worry about our kids’ education and the way we don’t prepare them for the real world.

Kids should have better life skills such as opening a bank account, credit cards and how they work along with debt advice including car finance – right the way through to basic cooking skills, how to iron, get a passport and especially, with so many youngsters dying on our roads, attending a speed awareness course – BEFORE they start driving.

I worry about the environment and I worry about the disgraceful state of our roads. Accidents are happening daily as a result of poorly maintained roads but what are we doing about these avoidable accidents? Naff all.

The SMMT suggests that there are 37.7 million vehicles on our roads but I agree with Mike Rutherford who writes for Auto Express that if you take into account drivers on our roads driving cars that are unregistered and the many more foreign trucks delivering bits from Europe massively outnumbering the number of our trucks in Europe we probably have over 40 million vehicles on our roads?

We are not only running out of space but the roads we have are a disgrace with potholes big enough to drop an elephant into without it touching the sides. I know there are many other things to worry about but if we don’t get our roads in good repair and build new, wider roads the whole of our road transport system will come to a standstill. Having travelled on the M25 last week I think it already has! By Graham Hill

If you are old like me you will remember the days when you used to collect empty beer and soft drink bottles, take them to the off-licence or local shop and get a few pence for each returned.

In those days, of course, the bottles were re-used so it was good for us kids, boosting our pocket money, and good for the environment. I’m not sure if the creators of Britain’s first recycling reward bins had this old idea in mind but the principle is the same.

Each plastic or glass bottle or empty coffee cup that you put into the recycle bin, installed in the services in Maidstone in Kent, earns you a 5p voucher towards your cup of coffee. Researchers have measured the litter levels in the Kent service centre over the last 4 weeks and will compare the impact of the machines over the next 6 months.

If successful we will see them installed at many more sites. The trial is being run by environmental charity Hubbub and has been backed by Highways England. The company has calculated that litter thrown out by motorists costs taxpayers £8 million a year.

Wayne Moore of Highways Agency is in favour of the initiative as he points out, employing people to pick up litter is not only dangerous, they can be a distraction to motorists and they could be used elsewhere more productively. Funny how some of the old ideas are still the best! By Graham Hill

The Vehicle Remarketing Association (VRA) has reported an imbalance in diesel demand which is causing all sorts of headaches with leasing and PCP providers.

New car demand for diesels has dropped through the floorboards causing manufacturers to scale up petrol production whilst dropping off production of diesel cars.

However, demand for used diesel cars is still running at the same level with no sign that it will drop soon. With fewer diesels finding their way into the used car market diesel prices will increase as times goes on.

This could start to make leasing and PCP costs for new diesel cars lower and more competitive again. New car supply has also had an effect on used car prices as people switch to used cars when they can’t get their new car quickly enough.

So there has been a slight increase in demand for nearly new petrol cars created by buyers who would normally buy new and who have decided to go for petrol this time around.

With lower running costs and better fuel consumption, experts feel that diesels are still here to stay even though some manufacturers have announced that they will be dropping their diesel engines fairly soon.

Personally, I feel that they have been a bit premature especially in light of recent reports that the ‘real-world’ emissions testing on petrol and diesel cars have found that there is very little to choose between petrol and diesel emissions.

We are still desperate for guidance from the Government. By Graham Hill

What Car has carried out a survey into car faults, a subject on which I have incredibly strong views. They start their report by reminding us of the attitude expressed by our parents (or could have been just my dad) that the more you add to cars the more likely something will go wrong.

Logically that has to be true, the question is – what is an acceptable level of faults and more important is when things go wrong how well do those responsible fix the problem? And that’s my issue, far too often drivers experience faults that dealers and manufacturers fight tooth and nail not to fix whilst totally ignoring driver rights and flouting their legal obligations. And with so few people knowing their legal rights dealers get away with murder.

However, I cover this in detail in my PCP report so I’ll get back to the findings of What Car. They found that 12% of faulty cars were off the road for more than a week with the most common problem being engine related which affected 28% of the faulty cars. When checking the classes of cars they found that 35% of luxury SUV’s and 31% of luxury cars suffered from faults.

At the other end of the scale 21% of city cars and 18% of electric cars suffered with faults. Interestingly cars fitted with diesel engines suffered from more faults than their petrol equivalents. 39% of diesel luxury SUV’s suffered faults whilst only 23% of their petrol equivalents had faults. 33% of diesel family saloons had faults whilst just 24% of their petrol equivalents had faults.

Worst for faults was diesel MPV’s followed closely by luxury diesel SUV’s. Petrol engine MPV’s weren’t much better than the diesels. Whilst petrol luxury SUV’s have problems with fuel consumption they fare better than diesel cars so the advice is to take a petrol rather than a diesel.

The top 5 brands for faults, i.e. the least reported faults were Lexus (10.7%), Suzuki (16.2%), Dacia (18.6%), Toyota (18.9%) and Honda (20.6%). At the other end, the worst cars were Land Rover (44.1%), Jeep (41.2%), Citroen (39.9%), Smart (39.5%) and Nissan (38.4%).

Not in my opinion a happy state of affairs – far too many faults for my liking. By Graham Hill

According to a special report in Auto Express we find out that there was a 56% increase in vehicle theft last year over the previous year. This sounds dreadful and of course it is, especially if you were a victim. But improvements in technology has actually had a very positive effect on thefts when compared to the 90’s.

In 1992 600,000 cars were stolen. This dropped to 56,000 in 2016 but in 2017 the number increased to 89,000, according to the Office of National Statistics. The first reaction is to blame the serious drop in police numbers and of course that hasn’t helped. But experts suggest that this isn’t the real reason, they blame it on the upsurge in Keyless Entry.

I’ve reported on how the thieves manage to steal your car with the use of technology so I won’t cover it again. But the fact is that we can exist without it. A keyless device it is transmitting all the time so as soon as you approach your car the car’s receiver picks up the signal and unlocks the door.

Once inside you can start the car by pressing the start button. Far too easy and frankly, in my opinion, unnecessary. In order to unlock my car I have to push a button on my ‘key’, and it works. I also have a keyring with my door key and a couple of other keys hanging from it.

If I had a keyless key I would still need a keyring! So I really don’t get it, especially as so many cars are stolen as a result of having a keyless device. By Graham Hill

A solution would be to stop the car when it senses that the key isn’t within range but this raises all sorts of safety questions. So the industry is working on ways to make keyless entry less vulnerable but I find myself asking why? OK, you can buy boxes and wallets into which you can place the device whilst at home to prevent scammers from picking up and relaying the signal but it’s too much fannying about in my opinion. Bring back keys!!

It has been admitted that some Mercedes Euro 6 diesels have been fitted with ‘defeat devices’ in order to pass emissions tests. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has now given Mercedes a deadline to issue a recall over the emissions irregularities. Can you believe it?

I’m mystified that this hasn’t been headline news following the VW debacle. The view is that fewer vehicles have been affected although in Germany – Daimler, owners of Mercedes Benz, has ordered the recall of 238,000 cars. In the UK the cars reported to be affected are 90% of those fitted with Vito 1.6l diesel (OM622) and 2.2l diesel (OM 651).

Affected are C Class and GLC with 4 cylinder engines. Single digit percentages of the following are also affected, S Class, E Class Coupe, G Class, ML Class and GLE. These are exclusively those fitted with Euro 6b engines. The DVSA has given Mercedes till 22 June to respond to their call to issue a recall. Last week Germany’s transport ministry, the KBA, said that 744,000 Mercedes Euro 6 diesels across Europe contained ‘illegal switch off devices’ to pass emissions tests.

A spokeswoman for Mercedes said ‘Open legal questions will be clarified in the objection proceedings. We will update the DVSA with information specific to the UK as soon as we can’. I find it totally disgraceful that any manufacturer should openly fiddle the emissions tests and seemingly get away with a recall. Incredible.  By Graham Hill

We were all led to believe that when we left the EU we would take back all controls into the UK. But it now seems clear that this won’t be the case. In my PCP report I advise that the added protection we have with the EU 2 year guarantee won’t find its way into UK law.

What does this mean? Well, if you have a fault on a car within 2 years of taking delivery, especially in the case of a used car, even after it can be shown that the fault existed when you bought the car (something you have to prove after 6 months of delivery – before then the dealer has to prove that it didn’t exist) you may be asked to contribute towards the cost of repair or replacement. Especially in the case of replacement – known as ‘betterment’.

Let’s say your gearbox needs to be replaced but the car has travelled 50,000 miles. The dealer agrees to replace the gearbox but as your car now has a brand new or re-conditioned gearbox you are asked to pay towards the cost as the car is now worth more than it was before the new gearbox was fitted. However, the EU 2 year Consumer Guarantee makes no allowance for ‘betterment’ so you are not expected to contribute.

I agree with this. Why should you be expected to pay towards the cost of replacement when you believed that you were buying a car with no major faults, so you should have expected a couple of years at least of trouble free motoring. To have to stump up another unexpected amount of several hundreds of pounds is simply unfair.

It gets worse as David Ward, Secretary General of Global NCAP, has warned. In the past, due to our high volume of new car purchases, we have been a major voice at the table when setting safety and emissions standards. These standards are set by the UN Economic Commission For Europe with all 28 EU members block voting and more or less having the major say.

In future, David Ward has warned that whilst the EU will continue with their block vote we will be a single voice in the wilderness with virtually no clout. Is this what taking back sovereignty means? It isn’t what Mr Ward was expecting and has pressed Mrs May to negotiate a deal with Europe to enable us to have a stronger say. By Graham Hill

Over the last few years we’ve seen changes in the law that have prevented children from sitting unstrapped in the back of cars, with very specific rules relating to baby seats and booster seats. Children over 12 years old or 135cm tall must use a seat belt.

There are weight and height restrictions that relate to different types of baby seats and booster seats, etc etc. The fact is that it is impossible to police. It’s illegal to smoke in a car with a child under 18 as a passenger and eating a sandwich, bar of chocolate or swigging a drink whilst driving can land you a fine of £100 if considered to be ‘dangerous driving’ by a policeman.

Again, unless part of an investigation following an accident, it is very unlikely you will ever be prosecuted so it makes you wonder about the effectiveness of setting down laws unless we have enough police to enforce them. Maybe by setting down the laws, there is an assumption that the rules will prick the conscience of drivers and stop them from breaking them. I would suggest that those with a conscience wouldn’t break the law in the first place.

I therefore question the benefit of setting down new laws to attempt to cut down on the number of young people if the laws are simply unenforceable due to the lack of policemen patrolling the roads. Theresa May has asked The Department for Transport to consider graduated driving licences. Changes could include a minimum supervised learning period and a restriction on the number of passengers.

Figures show that one in four young drivers are involved in  an accident within 2 years of passing their driving tests. Road safety charity Brake has called for a minimum of 10 hours of professional tuition before taking driving tests with restrictions in place for the following 2 years.

A similar system introduced in New Zealand dropped car crash injuries by 23% in 16 – 19-year-olds. What they don’t mention is the number of police patrolling the roads that might act as a deterrent amongst young drivers. I’m all for prevention but surely this sort of awareness should be taught at school along with other life skills. Introducing new laws with no police to enforce them is pointless. By Graham Hill