Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Search and destroy – uninsured vehicles
It would be nice to have a spare £5000 wouldn’t it? Yes it would – and that’s why the maximum fine for driving without insurance is £5000 and six to eight penalty points too.
The hope is that this will deter motorists from getting behind the wheel without insurance – but amazingly 242,000 uninsured drivers are caught and convicted every year in the UK.
In a bid to reduce this number and lower the cost of annual premiums on car insurance for honest drivers, ministers are giving power to the DVLA which will allow them to clamp, seize and potentially crush any uninsured vehicles they find – even if they’re not being driven at the time.This scheme, which comes into effect in June this year, will not affect people with Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) for their car and is purely in place to make being uninsured a harder offence to get away with.
The road safety minister stated, “Uninsured drivers injure 23,000 people each year and add £30 to every responsible motorist’s premium so we need to do everything we can to keep them off the roads.”
So – as well as being able to look forward to the sun and warmth of the summer months – in June we could also look forward to a reduction in car insurance prices.
Fingers crossed everyone!
Image by John Picken via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car insurance, DVLA, motorists, penalty points, premium, SORN, uninsured
Monday, April 18, 2011
Travelling in wheel comfort
We’re all thankful for our cars when we have to undertake a long journey or cross harsh terrain, but one 37-year-old man has taken the comfort of four wheels to the extreme – by using just one wheel and travelling through some of the planet’s most difficult locations.
The Canadian unicycler, who has been riding since he was 12 years old, has an amazing talent for unicycling and is fearless when it comes to trekking across the world’s most impressive and dangerous regions.
His one-wheeled talents have won him the 1999 North American, 2002 World and 2005 European unicycle trials championships, as well as an extremely respectable third place in the seven-day mountain BC Bike Race in 2010 – against 500 two-wheeled cyclists!This unicyclist likes to challenge himself and among the achievements he can boast about are riding through the jungles of Bolivia, travelling the length of the Great Wall of China, and cycling down the side of a 6000 metre volcano – all on his one wheel.
This man brings a new meaning to the word off-roading!
The unicyclist, who is also a professional geoscientist states, “I do get some odd looks sometimes on my travels.” We’d have never guessed.
Image by magician14 via photobucket
Labels: car, off-roading, wheel
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Driving me loopy!
A UK car leasing company recently decided to launch a competition to find Britain’s most loved and most hated roundabout.
Nothing could have prepared them for the flood of roundabout hate-mail entries which flooded in – which far out-numbered the love-letters.
The firm, who was looking for entries representing both good and bad road layouts, stated, "We're delighted that we've had such a positive response from the public, it's just a shame they've not been so complimentary about their nominations."
Some in the roundabout black-list are The Queen's Garden's island in Newcastle-under-Lyme, the Culverhouse roundabout on the A48 in Cardiff, and the famous Magic Roundabout in Hemel Hempstead – but there are many more entries for this category.
A company spokesperson has said that "common complaints have been poor layouts, worn markings, traffic jams and general confusion, all of which I can understand will frustrate drivers on their regular commute".
Apparently they are “hoping to receive more nominations for the best roundabout category and are challenging the public to go out there and snap an island which has in some way improved their lives".
We’re not sure whether they’ll get many positive entries – most roundabouts drive us round the bend!
Image by s_pollard via photobucket
Labels: car, markings, road layout, roundabout, traffic jam
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Crawlies for dinner. I find the thought creepy.
As a generation I know that we’re extremely lucky to be able to eat all kinds of foods all the year round.
We want a pineapple? We go to the supermarket and buy one for a couple of quid – conveniently pre-prepared for us if we like. Fancy a coffee? Role on down to Starbucks and order a flat white. Need some milk? Will that be organic, full cream, skimmed, semi-skimmed, jersey, Goat’s, soy or rice?
The list could go on. But it’s worth remembering that we’re among the very first generations to have taken this wealth of choice for granted.
A pineapple doesn’t even seem exotic any more, yet only a couple of hundred years ago they were worth more than their weight in gold. Coffee, too, used to sell for a similar premium and milk, well, it was just milk.
The same goes for meat. Supermarket shelves are packed with meat from all over the world – from New Zealand to Iceland – but there is a concern that all this livestock and all these air miles could eventually take their toll on the planet.
As a response to this need for low mileage food, Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers has created a three-course Banquet of Insects for the restaurant at Oxford’s Museum of Natural History. It showcases such delicacies such as worm crisps, grasshopper salsa tacos and chocolate-coated locusts.Apparently, just as we’re all being asked to become car insurance customers for electronic vehicles in preference to gas-guzzlers, we should all be considering insects as sustainable and locally sourced food.
Nice idea, but I’m going to take some convincing. What do other young drivers think?
Image © avlxyz via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: electronic vehicles, low mileage, young driver
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Learner driver rage
We have probably all had our bad days when learning to drive and might even have had a bad experience during the driving test too – going into the wrong lane at a roundabout, stalling at red lights – but one news report has exposed just how badly a driving test can go.
A driver, who was planning to take his test in his own car, was told by the instructor that the exam couldn’t go ahead because he had an electronically-operated handbrake, which is not allowed in a test vehicle.
Now, at this point the motorist could have sighed and felt a bit hard-done-by for the rest of the day – as most of us would have done after the test nerves reached an anticlimax.
However, instead of resigning himself to the situation, he flew into a rage and took the examiner on an anger-fueled drive from hell – breaking the speed limit and running red lights on a busy road – before the poor tester escaped from the vehicle on a side-road.
The road-rage candidate completed his unorthodox test route by accidentally hitting the examiner in the face with the car door as he sped away.
Could have gone better? Yes – yes it could.
Image by Chelsea(: via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: driving test, learner driver, roundabout
Monday, April 4, 2011
Used cars – every little helps
When you think “used cars“ your first thought is unlikely to be Tesco.
However, that may all change since the supermarket giant has just launched itself into the second-hand car market and aims to post 3,000 vehicles a week on its site “tescocars.com”.
Customers can search for a car by entering a make, model and specific price bracket, or they can choose to find a car which fits their “lifestyle”. This allows the prospective buyer to enter details such as what they need space in the boot for, how important car comfort or safety features are to them, and which fuel they would rather use.
The buyer also has the opportunity to view a vehicle report, made by the RAC, so they can be sure that the vehicle is in good working order. And, apparently, Clubcard holders will earn themselves 2,000 points if they purchase a car on the company’s site.
So, there you go, Tesco really is adhering to their “every little helps” motto.
Run out of toilet-paper – Tesco. Need sandwiches for lunch – Tesco. Want a used car which fits exactly to your specifications – Tesco.
Image by dorecommend via Photobucket
Labels: eco-friendly, fuel, RAC, used car
Friday, April 1, 2011
Helping your ambitions hit target
A new study by insurance company AXA has found that young people in Britain are more ambitious than young people from any other nation in Europe.
At first this seems like a good news story, until you read further down the study and find that although they are more ambitious they also have the least faith that they will attain their ambitions.
I understand this, ambition can be crippling – it’s one thing to have the ambitious ideal but it’s altogether another thing to have the self-confidence to test the reality of that ambitious ideal.Every day in Britain, a young driver is faced with an example of this paradox. Yes, we want to take to the roads and yes, we want to get the cheap car insurance that makes it possible, but when we look for an affordable quote, we often find that none appears to exist. So faced with the choice of paying £30,000 to insure a one-litre Nissan Micra or not driving at all, we sigh with weary resignation and give up.
As much as it pains me to say, in this respect, just like with football, we could learn from the Germans and the Spanish – they are more likely to redouble their efforts and “try harder” when faced with such obstacles.
But then again, if you’re reading this then chances are that you’ve either got lucky early on and found Hoot – or you’ve already taken a leaf from the German and Spanish way and worked hard to find us, a young driver car insurance quote specialist.
So don’t give up, let us compare the market for you so that we can find you the really cheap young driver insurance that helps you reach your ambitions.
As Bill Bradley, the great American basketball player and former democratic presidential candidate, said, “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.”
Image by j9sk9s via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: cheap car insurance, young driver
We buy any car – for less than you thought
A recent news report we’ve come across illustrates perfectly how important it is for drivers, who may be looking for young person’s car insurance, to shop around on the internet for all car-related offers in order to get the best deal.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has taken issue with Webuyanycar.com.
Here’s how the website works: after entering details of a car on the site, a motorist then receives a free valuation. Following this, one of the company’s inspectors comes to examine the vehicle to make sure that the details entered by the customer are correct.
However, during on-site inspections, customers have been shocked when the final offered buying price for their car is greatly reduced from the original appraisal.
The OFT think that the firm has been misleading people into thinking that if their car, upon inspection, matched the description entered online then they would receive the on-site valuation price.
Webuyanycar.com, known for its catchy, if slightly irritating, all-singing, all-dancing advert, has apparently been offering only 4% of its customers the price they were originally quoted for their vehicle online. Other customers have been receiving a significantly lower amount – up to 25% in some cases!
The company are now making changes to the website so that no one else is caught off guard.
Image by oshousecleaning via photobucket
Labels: young person’s car insurance