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a few people have been asking about new cars and when a new car is a new car. I have explained this in detail in my book, An Insider Guide To Car Finance, which can be bought and downloaded online. But to summarise, the car must not have been registered to anyone else before you receive it, not even to the dealer and it must not have an ‘unreasonable’ mileage on the clock, expressed in one court case to be no more than 500 although I find this excessive. The strange rule is that Read more »

A row has broken out between the Government and the Magistrates Association over proposals by the Department for Transport to introduce fixed penalties for careless driving. The proposal will give the police new powers to impose a fixed penalty of £60 and 6 points on the licence where a driver admits to an act of careless driving. The Magistrates Association is furious as they feel it diminishes the serious nature of Read more »

Many of you have read in the past my mention of the Gwent Fleet Management fraud which left many customers out of pocket and in many instances without a car. This case is just the tip of the iceberg and has been so public because so many customers were caught up in it but serious fraud is being committed all over the country daily. However, because the cases are spread so thinly no one type of fraud is hitting the headlines, causing consumers to be Read more »

Over the years I have put forward many reasons why you should opt for Dealer HP over a personal loan (contrary to all advice given in the media). Your legal rights are so much greater when you take HP. If you have read my book An Insider Guide To Car Finance, or been a regular reader of my newsletter, you would know the reasons that I put forward. However, I have just uncovered a new one that you may find useful if you, or a friend/relation ever find yourself in this situation. If you are a consumer (can also be a sole trader) and you purchase a vehicle outright you are deemed to have accepted the goods if you have had a reasonable time to inspect the goods and not rejected them. After this time your remedy for defects is restricted to Read more »

Specialist law firm, Driving Defences LLP have said that thousands of convictions of failing to provide a specimen could be overturned due to questions over the reliability of the police intoximeter machine. They brought a successful case in which it was proven that due to an error made by the police, a defendant could not possibly have provided a sample of breath. Martin Hammond, a solicitor at the practice, said Read more »

 If you use your own car for company business or you allow employees to drive their own cars for business use Active Risk Management feel they have a solution to checking if employees are totally road legal in their own cars by providing an ongoing audit service. Employees will be issued with an online permit which will confirm whether they are eligible to drive on company business. The record will show whether the Read more »

Mobile phones are in the spotlight again. This time as a result of the dangers posed by the various alert text messages causing drivers to check their phones whilst driving which is of course illegal and very dangerous. The one that has come in for most criticism is traffic alerts provided by Trafficmaster. The idea was to enable drivers to receive updates before Read more »

1 in 12 seventeen to twenty five year old drivers don’t believe that they will ever get caught when drink driving compared to 1 in 25 older drivers. These findings were the result of a survey carried out amongst 4,000 drivers by safety charity BRAKE and Green Flag Motoring Assistance. Safety organisations have been pushing to extend police powers to enable them to breathalyse drivers without Read more »

As we approach Christmas new warnings have been issued about drink driving but this time about the use of cheap testing devices that you can buy on the Internet. Tests carried out by Parker’s Guide with the help of West Yorkshire Police and Medacx, a supplier of testing equipment to police forces in the UK, have found many of these cheap do-it-yourself testers to be unreliable and in some cases Read more »

Since the introduction of free movement throughout Europe it has become possible for drivers to hold two driving licences at the same time, one from his country of origin and another, quite legally, issued in the country in which he now resides. This has led to a situation whereby a driver is convicted of an offence following which his Read more »