Why now is the time to have your say on MoT testing

THERE is less than a week left to have your say about proposed laws which could spell the end of the MoT if - like me - you've got a car made before 1988.

Over a pint last night I spent a good twenty minutes trying to explain the implications of the European Roadworthiness Directive to my tame mechanics, who for the crime of being classic car specialists get the dubious honour of rescuing both my MGB and my MX-5 from their various mechanical maladies. It left me a bit worried - if two classic car mechanics aren't quite up to scratch with what the British Government are currently consulting over, what chance do the rest of us petrolheads have?

Unpeel the proposals from the EU bumph however, and it's fairly simple; in the plainest Northern English possible, the British Government has agreed to implement some form of MoT exemption for cars over 30 years old, as long as - and here's the tricky bit - they haven't had "substantial changes".

As it's a directive from Brussells rather than a fully-fledged law, however, it's entirely up to the boffins at Whitehall to work out exactly what substantial change is, which is why the Department for Transport is currently carrying out a consultation on the issue (albeit one that's not exactly been massively publicised).

It is a hugely divisive issue in the classic car world. I've always been of the opinion that ALL cars should have to go through an MOT (and I was definitely against pre-1960 cars being given MoT exemption) but I know plenty of people who reckon it's a good idea to exempt 30-year-old cars too, plenty of people who'd like classic cars to be tested every two years instead, and plenty of people who just want the European Union to get off our back and let us deal with our own motoring matters ourselves.

Whatever happens though, the important thing is to go on the consultation and get your thoughts across sooner rather than later - the consultation ends next Friday (24 October), so time's of the essence.

Hopefully, someone in Westminster or Whitehall will take note.

Road resurfacing is an annoying but effective way to slow drivers down

IT WAS the ping-ping of my Mazda’s paintwork being repeatedly bombarded which made me realise it. Sefton’s powers-that-be have inadvertently won the war on speed!

I can’t have been the only motorist left last week in the peculiar position of struggling to keep within a 20mph speed limit but unwilling to venture above the pace of any half-decent cyclist on the Formby Bypass. A strategy of having every major road resurfaced almost simultaneously turned seeing friends and family into a game of rat-running roadworks and crawling along temporary surfaces, listening to the crackle of my MX-5’s surfaces being chinked and chipped away by the stones being chucked up.

It is, of course, better than the alternative – a North West criss-crossed with roads so badly potholed they’re suitable only for the Lunar Rovers last deployed on NASA’s Moon missions. However, I still pondered which clot had signed off resurfacing the Coastal Road in Ainsdale, stretches of the Formby Bypass, Altcar Road in Formby, and several of Southport’s more important thoroughfares almost simultaneously. Surely redoing ALL of them wasn’t a particularly bright idea?

Then it hit me. The combined threat of destroying the paintwork on your pride and joy and skidding to a fiery death if you drove one of these resurfaced roads at speed had succeeded in reducing the average pace – even on a dual carriageway – to the sort of speeds I normally do on my mountain bike. The roadworks have succeeded where that favourite strategy of the Speed Kills lobby – 20mph speed limits – failed.

Not convinced? Well, nationwide research by the Institute of Advanced Motorists into the effects of dropping 30mph limits by a third showed that the number of accidents actually went up by over a quarter, with less severe accidents increasing by 17%. Logically, you’d reason that the nation’s go-faster drivers are utterly unmoved by a lower speed limit, but I bet they’d think twice about ruining the optional metallic paint on their Audi A4s.

I’m sure I can’t be the only person a bit peeved with the policy of redoing roads with noisy, slow, paint-removing substances en-masse, but you can’t deny it got even the most ardent of speed freaks to back off for a change.

The conclusion’s a simple one. A rubbish road is a safe one.

Meanwhile in Russia sets a dangerous UK precedent

HOPE you’ve enjoyed a pleasant week’s motoring, bereft of bumps and scratches. Meanwhile, in Russia, footage of a fishtailing Lada has been uploaded to YouTube for your evening entertainment.

You can’t have failed to notice the sheer quantity of clips being uploaded to YouTube of Russians crashing things, badly filmed by dashcams of family saloons slogging their way through a snowdrift somewhere in Siberia. This compelling concoction of spins, rolls and crashes – think of it as sort of You’ve Been Framed meets Police Camera Action, with added Moscowprofanity – has proven so popular that petrolheads over here now happily use #meanwhileinrussia as a hashtag on Twitter.

If you don’t know what a hashtag is, get your children to fire up YouTube and enjoy someone else’s motoring misfortune to while away a few idle minutes. It is weirdly compelling for the same reason that you’ll always slow down on the motorway to gawp at a car crash.

Yet what worries me isn’t these clips’ weirdly addictive edge. It’s that the things which make them possible – those crude, dashboard-mounted cameras – are becoming increasingly fashionable over here too.

Already I know of one court case which involved a lorry driver whose dashboard camera proved an unfortunate meeting between his cab and motorcyclist wasn’t his fault. As a result of this and the increasing appetite for the insurance companies to have our every movement monitored – black boxes, anyone – dashboard camera sales are booming in the UK. You might even get one under the tree this Christmas.

While the idea behind them has an appeal – film your drive to work, so you can prove it was the prat in the Audi A3 who drove into your front bumper at 40mph – I can’t help but wonder if we’re unintentionally creating Channel Four’s next comedy series for them, free of charge.

At the moment at least, there’s precious little to prevent these clips escaping into cyberspace, where spotty teenagers will be able to compile them into amusing ten minute videos, which will amuse office workers in Moscow endlessly. The clips will be just as morbidly compelling, but with fewer errant Ladas involved. Being involved in a crash, for whatever reason, is frightening enough, but knowing it’ll sit on YouTube for the rest of eternity or be forever repeated on Britain’s Best Car Crashes is something else altogether.

Meanwhile in Russia, for now, has a certain crude ring to it, but Meanwhile in Formby is a scarier prospect altogether.

Top safety ratings for four new cars

FOUR new arrivals at showrooms across the north west have all been given a coveted European safety rating.

Crash test experts at the Euro NCAP programme have confirmed the new Jeep Cherokee, Mercedes-Benz CLA, Suzuki SX-4 and Peugeot 2008 have all been awarded its highest rating of five stars – good news for anyone thinking of buying one.

To find out how your car performed in the tests go to to the Euro NCAP website.

Qoros leads the way for safer Chinese cars

A GROUP of European safety experts have awarded their highest accolade to a Chinese-built car for the first time.

These days a five star rating from Euro NCAP is a big selling point on new cars, so Qoros will be delighted that its latest saloon, the 3, passed the safety tests with flying colours. Euro NCAP also gave Kia its latest five-star rating, after the Carens people carrier impressed the testers.

If you want to know how your car performed go to www.euroncap.com

VW's electronic nannying makes me want to rage against the machine

IT’S a debate that 21st century philosophers ought to be debating. Is it right to reprimanded by your car?

I was thinking this last weekend, when – having successfully navigated 65 miles across two different counties – the electronic brain of the Volkswagen Polo I’d borrowed decided to give me some help with parking. Help, incidentally, that I hadn’t asked it for.

“LOOK!” the digital readout on the dashboard screamed. “SAFE TO MOVE?”

The Polo might have gained a bit of girth over its 40 year career, admittedly, but it’s still what I’d call a small car. Even Maureen from Driving School could master it. Yet the Polo’s electronic brain, in its better wisdom, decided it needed to remind me anyway that I need to look before I back into a parking space.

It gets worse. Germany’s supermini of choice also decided that the last thing I needed while backing up a small hatchback was music distracting me from the job in hand, so it automatically turned the radio down and steadfastly refused to let me turn back up again.

Katy Perry’s roar, it insisted, would be a distant hum for the duration of the parking. Drivers with tasks as dangerous as a bay park deserve not the dulcet tones of Russell Brand’s ex-wife!

I got out of the Polo a bit peeved, wondering whether I’d somehow annoyed it earlier on with a fluffed gearchange or a cheeky overtake, and it’d decided I was an idiot and therefore needed all the help I could get. Despite it being a sturdily-built, family-friendly package that’s blessed with tidy handling and restrained good looks, my overall verdict on the Polo is that it’s never good for a car to be patronising.

True, drivers too stupid to put on their seatbelts deserve the book – and some safety beeps bonging out of the dashboard – thrown at them, and even I’ll grudgingly admit the high pitched whine almost every modern motor makes when you forget to turn the lights off has saved me the occasional flat battery. When I’m driving, however, I’m the boss and I’ll reverse however I choose to. If I prang an L-reg Fiesta in the process – and, in five years of driving, I’ve never yet come close – then that’s my lookout.

I suspect that, hundreds of miles away, in a bunker in deepest Wolfsburg, some VW engineers decided to instil the Polo with its annoying Nanny State tendencies in a bid to avoid Polo owners going to Claims Direct in about ten years’ time because they’ve reversed into pedestrians. Maybe it’ll become compulsory in the distant future, and for someone who takes pride in how they drive, that worries me.

Given the choice between cars which constantly tell you what to do, and Katy Perry, I know which I’d pick.

The sun sets on another summer of motoring fun

COULDN'T resist sharing this shot of the MX-5 bathed in evening sunlight, which I took by the beach at Southport a couple of days ago.

With the nights drawing in, the air getting chillier and the wet British summer set to turn into an even wetter British winter, it's probably one of the last times I'll be able to snap a nice, summer-esque photo of the bargain ragtop. From Sunday onwards, driving around after about five-ish is firmly a night time, lights on affair.

All of which neatly brings me to one charity's calls for us all to stop becoming accident statistics at this time of year.

Road safety charity Brake have said they're keen to help combat the annual trend of road accident numbers rising during the winter months by urging drivers to take extra caution when behind the wheel due to the lack of daylight during evening commuting.

Ellen Booth, the charity's senior campaigns officer, said: “We can all help to reduce terrible and needless road deaths and injuries in winter darkness, and drivers in particular can make big a difference by committing to slow down.

"Slowing down to 20mph in communities gives you time to stop quickly should you need to: particularly vital when visibility is low."

She also urged walkers, cyclists and joggers to help themselves avoid becoming part of the accident statistics, by wearing hi-vis clothing to help make it easier for motorists to see them.

Consider the advice noted. I might just go for one more roof-down blast before the clocks go back...

Mr Honda Concerto ought to agree with my take on rural speed

THE Honda's rear haunches have never looked so frustrating. Even though it was the crack of dawn on a dry weekend morning, Mr Concerto was dawdling.

Bikers among this column's readers will already know why the Cat and Fiddle road, between Macclesfield and Buxton, is worth seeking out - and why it's such a regular visitor to all those accident statistic surveys as a result. It is, carefully driven, a stunning route across the Pennines well worth seeking out. If you've brought a car - and not a superbike - the 50mph speed limit is plenty, but Mr Concerto was having none of it. He was determined I'd be doing 28mph, and not one measly mile an hour more. A great drive ruined by someone dangerously determined not to be overtaken.

Anyway, it was all part of my quest to answer a question I left hanging a couple of weeks back - is it better to head somewhere the fun way or the quick one? The answer, unless you're absolutely insistent that every journey must go via the Buttertubs Pass in the Yorkshire Dales, is emphatically the quick one. On a really long drive motorways are infinitely preferable to getting lost in Mansfield's one way system.

Besides, little country lanes are going to get slower still if the Coalition gets its way; successive governments have struggled to deal with rural accident rates, and now Cameron and Clegg (which, by the way, sounds like a dodgy estate agent) have hit on a solution. Rather than a blanket reduction, they're considering making it easier for local authorities to lower limits as they choose. It is The Big Society versus speed.

For what it's worth, I reckon it's a good idea - there are far too many winding lanes which you could technically shoot down at sixty, but to try would be lethally dangerous, and chances are your local council knows more about accident hotspots than Whitehall does. Great power, however, comes with great responsibility.

If I head to somewhere like Lincolnshire or Yorkshire behind the wheel of something sporty, it'd comfort me greatly to know that the speed limit's been considered locally by folk who know the roads. What I emphatically wouldn't want - and what a lot of the nationals reported last weekend - is a blanket lowering of rural limits to 40mph from the current sixty.

I'm not a speed freak - a proper petrolhead values good handling over doing a million miles an hour anyway - but what I reckon motorists want is education rather than punishment. We want to know people are actually thinking about road safety rather than just blindly and blanketly laying down the law.

Hopefully, Mr Concerto agrees with me.

I couldn't agree more with traffic calming, but are speed bumps really the answer?

I KNOW it's a victory for safety but it's a crashing defeat for my suspension and - by proxy - my spine. The council has ruined one of my favourite roads.

If, like me, you ever travel between Churchtown and Crossens you'll know what I'm on about. Where once there was smooth tarmac there are now rows of humps, right the way between these two charming parts of Southport, and they haven't succeeded in slowing me down. They've made me stop using it altogether.

“A-ha!” I can hear the council's road safety boffins retort in response, Alan Partridge style. Where once souped-up Saxos and Corsas screamed along this stretch of road they're now having to brake before each and every bump; that or face the prospect of either breaking their backs or damaging their shock absorbers. I'm sure, in a year's time, the stats will show the council's mission of reducing the speeds along Bankfield Lane and Rufford Road will have been easily accomplished.

Don't think for a moment that I'm demanding the right to drive down it like a man who's late for the birth of his first child - I couldn't agree more with the need to slow people down along some roads (and everybody's got at least one in mind). There are, for instance, far too many single track roads I know which you can legally do 60mph on, but to even attempt it would be insane. 30mph too fast for Bankfield Lane? Yep, at quite a few times of day I'd go along with that.


Bankfield Lane is one of my favourite roads for a very simple reason - more often that not, it connects where I live with where I want to go. I know that plenty of motorists took the mickey a bit with it, and on some tragic occasions with fatal results. As a motorist I loved it, but as a Crossens chap I couldn't agree more something needed to be done to slow people down.

But did it really need an endless series of enormous speed humps to cure the problem? Couldn't chicanes have done the trick? Or lowering the speed limit? Or even - and I know this is dangerously avantgarde thinking - road safety cameras? I have a particular hatred reserved for speed bumps because while they slow down the dangerous minority (who'll only find a different road to strut their stuff on anyway), it's the majority of motorists who have to pay the price of the additional wear and tear.

The irony is that it's those who live locally - the ones who called for traffic calming in the first place - who'll suffer the most.

Is car insurance for the young too expensive?

A PARLIAMENTARY committee led by a Liverpool MP has come to the same conclusion most motorists already know; that car insurance is crippingly expensive for younger drivers.

This week the Transport Select Committee has reopened its inquiry into the cost of car insurance, armed with new research which suggests a whopping 96% of younger drivers feel they are being “priced off the road” due to high insurance premiums.

Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman, the committee's chairperson, said:

“I am extremely concerned about these results, which show that young drivers think they are being priced off the road because of the high cost of motor insurance. It is shocking that so many young drivers are considering breaking the law – by driving without insurance or changing the details they provide to insurers – in order to get a cheaper premium.

"It's revealing that most young drivers are also unaware that many insurers receive referral fees in order to deal with claims they make. This highlights why the committee called for referral fees to be made more transparent in its report on the cost of motor insurance earlier this year."

However, insurers continue to charge younger drivers higher prices than their older counterparts, and point to high accident rates to justify them - Department for Transport statistics show that although people under 25 make up just 12% of those on the roads, they're involved in more than a quarter of the accidents.

Are you a younger driver being hit by the cost of insuring your car? Or do you think the accident statistics justify the prices? Share your thoughts by sending an email to david.simister@champnews.com

Speeding into the New Year

PREVIOUSLY unpublished information about the nation's speed cameras could be made available to drivers from next April under plans unveiled by the Coalition Government.

Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said this week that he wanted more information about all safety cameras to be made public, and suggested details such as accident rates and the options offered to motorists caught speeding should be made available as early as next April.

“Public bodies should be accountable and if taxpayers' money is being spent on speed cameras then it is right that information about their effectiveness is available to the public,” he said.

“The proposals I have announced today will help show what impact cameras are having on accident and casualty rates and also how the police are dealing with offenders.

This is in line with our commitment to improve transparency of government data so that the public are able to make more informed judgements about the work of local and central government.”

The Association of British Drivers said it welcomed the Government's announcements, which if fully approved will force road safety partnerships to publish more information, but said the scope of the information should go further.

“The ABD have years of experience attempting to get raw data out of elusive partnerships without success. Any data grudgingly released is invariably missing vital information or spun in a misleading fashion. This cannot continue,” said ABD Chairman Brian Gregory.

“Only when armed with the full information can the public see exactly what effect an individual camera has had. Of course, the raw data will also need to be ‘trend adjusted' i.e. casualties will have fallen everywhere over any recent ten year period due to huge advances in vehicle design.”

The Department for Transport said it will be working with police and local authority representatives as well as the Highways Agency to discuss the details of what should be published and how. The final requirements will then be confirmed in time for publication in April 2011.

Anyone expecting a New Year round up of the best cars, roads and things from 2010 should click here.

Getting lost with satnavs

SATNAVS. Do you know where I'm going with this one?

I'm genuinely lost with the latest wheeze from the world of satellite navigation, and not in the sense that I've been guided to a remote Scottish village when I actually wanted help getting to Newcastle. Ford has launched a guidance gizmo which lives in your rear view mirror.

A satnav in your rear view mirror? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this one, but I just can't shake the suspicion that it sounds at best distracting, and at worst just a little bit dangerous. But if you've got a spare £299 lying around in a box and a new Ford on order, you can find out for yourself.

Before anyone asks, no, I haven't tried it out, but I'm not entirely sure whether I'd want to, because I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with satnavs.

For every excellent example I've seen there's always been another which insists, in increasingly annoyed tones, that the M55 doesn't go anywhere near Blackpool. Or one that tells you to turn right once you've driven PAST the junction. I had one once which denied the existence of a small village in Staffordshire altogether.

But the beef I've got with Garmin's tie-in with Ford isn't about the gadget but where you have to look to see the streets virtually laid out - a small screen just to the left of your rear view mirror, which means you're clocking what's behind you to see what's ahead. Do you ask strangers stood behind you for directions? Nope, me neither, and I'd no sooner have a satnav screen in my rear mirror than I would in the door mirror, the cupholders or the passenger footwell. It's just not somewhere I'd instinctively look for directions.

The conumdrum was cracked long ago by the car industry; if you have to have a satnav it should sit in front of you, so you're not taking your eyes off the road when you're trying to work out where Winchester is. Whether it's the dashboard job you get on a Ferrari 458 or a Tom Tom taped to the windscreen of an ageing supermini, it's better than having to look in your rear view mirror. Or you can save yourself £290.46 and not bother, because the latest AA road atlas costs £8.54.

Rear view mirrors are where tailgating Transit vans live.

A little bit of everything

MOTORING events are – ironically – like buses. You wait ages for one…

First stop was a fancy restaurant in Aughton, although it was actually a helping of advanced driving on the menu, served up RoADAR Merseyside, an organisation determined to make motorists in Merseyside and Lancashire a little less likely to become an insurance statistic.

One of those motorists was a Lancashire resident with a passion for driving - despite being in his eighties.

Eric Sandelands, above, who is 81 years old, is among the motorists who have joined the group, who meet at the Swan Inn pub in Aughton, to sharpen up his driving skills and become a motorist with advanced skills.

“I thoroughly enjoy my driving, but I think as you get older, you gain more knowledge, but you wouldn't have the reactions of a driver who is 20 years old,” he told Life On Cars.

“Everybody should try and drive to the best of their ability - it's their responsibility to try and prevent any accidents happening. That's why I've taken up the course, to learn what I can, and I hope that the more I learn, the safer a driver I can become.”

Mr Sandelands, who did take an Institute of Advanced Motorists driving test around twenty years ago but is keen to improve his driving skills further still, is one of the Sefton and West Lancashire driver who has joined the group in an effort to pass safety charity ROSPA's driving test, which the group says is one of the highest accolades available to drivers to show competance and safety.

The group is open to drivers of all ages and abilities, and is currently looking for younger drivers - often the ones most likely to be involved in accidents - to join up.

“Advanced Driving or Riding will make you a more confident, safer, smoother and accurate driver or rider; it will reduce fuel consumption leading to fewer C02 emissions, and can also reduce insurance premiums. Passing the RoSPA test can also lead on to a BTec qualification in driving,” said Colin Knight, chairman of RoADAR Merseyside.

“We aim to prove that our free training can make Advanced driving a cool and exhilarating thing to do, and at the same time encourage safe driving and riding for life.”

Then it was my turn, only I wouldn't be using something like Eric's lovingly-maintained Skoda Octavia. My passport to advanced driving, it seems, is the £100 Renault 5 I bought earlier this year.

According to Colin I performed impressively enough, even getting a smattering of the top 'A' grades when it came to atttitude and vehicle safety, but am I really going to be good enough to get the group's coveted Gold certificate?

I'll be doing the whole course over the next month or so, just to let you know whether a twentysomething petrolhead in an ancient hatch really can cut it as an advanced driver. For more information about RoADAR Merseyside visit the group's website www.roadarmerseyside.org or contact Colin Knight on 07753 280465.

In fact, I was feeling so good about the advanced driving, I was determined to bring the Life On Cars Mini next time. Until this happened...
Lots of people talk about "driving the wheels off" off whatever it is they're at the wheel of on a cross-country sprint, but I doubt they mean it literally!

That's what happened to the Mini on a dash between Formby and Parbold, without any warning whatsoever. At first I thought it was a blowout, but it turns out of the driveshaft (a notorious weak spot on Minis, I'm now told) simply gave up the ghost, knocking out a swivel joint in the process, and meaning the wheel simply collapsed into the arch. At 40mph. On the way to a showing of The Italian Job I'd spent months organising. I've had better afternoons!

But I've been lucky, firstly because despite the scary-looking image no major damage seems to have been done, secondly because I'm informed the knackered part isn't too tricky to replace, and most importantly because I managed to recover the skid and nobody was hurt. Obviously the RoADAR course has come in handy already!

It's lucky I've got mates in the motoring trade, because I still managed to get to the showing of The Italian Job in the nick of time, which turned out to be a fantastic event.

Despite being a Mini short it was great to be able to see the petrolhead film on a cinema screen just as it was intended, and the people of Parbold seemed delighted with the armarda of Minis we'd brought along to get them in the mood. There'll be more about it on here later this week, but if you want to find out more take a look at this week's Ormskirk Champion.

And last but not least there's this, the latest look at a truly exciting Land Rover, due out sometime next year.

The LRX - set to be the smallest of the company's line up and badged as a Range Rover - looks fantastic, but the news that the firm are going to offer a 2WD version makes me sad.

Every Land Rover since the original Series One of 1948 has had 4WD, because it's something that shows that even their softest models mean business on the rough stuff.

But will a front-wheel-drive hatchback with the iconic badge still be a proper Land Rover? The jury's out...

Don't go on about your Toyota, just get it mended

THE sky is falling. Climate change will kill us all. We’re all going to get swine flu. Oh, and if you drive a Toyota you’re going to be wiped out in a high-speed inferno.

If you saw the front of either The Daily Mail or The Times chronicling Toyota’s safety recall earlier this week you would think getting behind the wheel is about as safe as gargling wasps or bungee jumping with the wrong rope, but as a paid-up media man I actually feel sorry for Toyota. Hysteria doesn’t cover it.

The coverage of the safety recall has been so disproportionate that you’d think it’d be best not to venture outdoors at all, for fear of a runaway Yaris with its throttle jammed open wiping you out. I can just see The Runaway IQ or Avensisageddon becoming a bad movie later this year.

Toyota’s head office actually told me this morning that the fault, which involves sticky accelerators on the Aygo, IQ, Yaris, Auris, Corolla, Verso, and Avensis, as well as the (Toyota based) Peugeot 107 and Citroen C1, only affects a very small number of vehicles, and that they’ve had to recall so many vehicles to be on the safe side.

Motor makers recall lots of cars every year, but the press seem to cherry-pick a handful and go mad with their keyboards. The last time any car got this much coverage was the Audi TT in its original, slightly slippery state, but there’s been far worse – and far quieter – recalls since.

Even if you are one of the very, very unlucky ones who gets caught out by a dodgy pedal, it’s really not hard to bring it to a halt. Most cars I’ve driven – even the ones with jammed throttles – have a brake and clutch, both of which slow you down. Even automatics can be asked nicely to glide to a stop, by braking and getting the gearbox to slow you down.

There will be a full feature in The Champion designed to allay readers’ fears (and it’ll be on here in the next few days too) but if your Toyota’s accelerator jams, stick the thing into neutral and get it sorted by your friendly local dealer.

And then stop going on about it.