Depending on your viewpoint, being told that there’s nearly 900 separate road works planned between now and December 2021, which could lead to thousands of days’ worth of delays, could be a good or terrible thing.

Of course, no one likes sitting in traffic jams, road works have become the bane of modern motoring, (well, that and being treated like a portable cash machine), but is there an argument in favour of these works?

Damned if you do…

It’s easy to sit here, staring out of my window looking at the rolling Warwickshire countryside and complain about being delayed while driving virtually anywhere thanks to roadworks, but I also have a foot firmly in the other camp: “We pay all these taxes, duty on fuel, VED, anti-pollution, congestion charges and look at the state of our roads … potholes big enough to crack a wheel and punch your suspension strut through the bonnet”.

No happy medium, unfortunately.

There’s an argument for carrying out the roadworks overnight (where possible), but that would lead to extending the overall length of time, a further increase in costs and overhead as the roadworks need setting up and breaking down each night, and lest we forget that ultimately, it’s the motorists that are paying for them.

… damned if you don’t

The planned road works are estimated to affect around 1 billion (913,609,699) journeys between now and December 2021, and although some major roads will be affected more, there doesn’t seem to be a geographical area that will be safe and free-flowing from these works.

The M6, in particular, will face at least 34 planned works, which the study creators say will cause disruption for 1,586 days (despite there only being just over 900 days until 1st December 2021), it’s thought that these 1,500+ days come from the extended timings for every journey affected.

The crux of the problem, at least according to Edmund King, President of the AA, is the desire to change traditional motorways into smart motorways, or as they’re now being called, ‘digital roads’.

Digital roads

Smart motorways, digital roads, whatever you call them, there’s still major concerns over road safety; over 400 miles of motorways are set to lose the hard shoulder, which has traditionally been the safety refuge for stranded motorists, despite there being inherent problems with it – Highways England announced last year that over 100 people were killed or injured every year while on the hard shoulder.

Of course, there are financial implications to the argument for digital roads vs traditional motorways; in a document on parliament.uk, it breaks down the costs of traditional widening, and for turning a motorway into an ‘All Lane Running’ motorway, but one particular section makes for important reading.

“Cost savings are at the heart of the Department’s justification for the permanent conversion of the hard shoulder into a running lane. The Government’s preference for All Lane Running is based on the fact that extra capacity can be obtained at a 60% lower cost than traditional road widening. The fact that All Lane Running is the least costly of the scheme designs cannot be challenged. That this involves the loss of the hard shoulder, resulting in a risk to safety, is another matter and is not justifiable.”

The reality

Despite bemoaning the fact that road works are seemingly everywhere, and that we once planned our journeys based on time & distance rather than guesstimating delays due to road works, the reality is that they’re now part of daily life as a motorist, and possibly with good reason.

How we travel is changing, or perhaps the vehicles we use to travel in, are changing. Vehicles are becoming smarter, able to interact with their surroundings, to know when to switch lanes, which direction they need to go, how much traffic is around them … smart cars are getting smarter but they need better infrastructure to work to their maximum efficiency, and better infrastructure means more roadworks.

For the majority of us that drive vehicles that have no connectivity, that still use a CD player for In-Car Entertainment or rely on outdated fossil-fuels to get from A to B, roadworks are painful. But we are literally a few steps away from full autonomy, science-fiction is fast becoming science fact, and the days of the ‘Johnny Cab’ are here already, providing the environment can cope with them.

So despite the fact that sitting in traffic jams due to road works is something akin to having teeth pulled, they’re a good thing, and if we don’t benefit from them, you know that our children will.

Is there a better way to build & repair roads? Are roadworks simply a fact of modern life? Is the Govt. wrong to put money before safety? Let us know in the comments.

Heathrow airport had 480,339 aircraft movements in 2018, moving over 80 million passengers to international destinations, and 1,715,440 tonnes of cargo.

A typical Boeing 747 aircraft uses approximately one gallon of fuel for every second of flight time, around five gallons per mile, or roughly 36,000 gallons of fuel for a ten-hour flight; not exactly planet-friendly. With an average fuel consumption (per annum) of 2,401,695 gallons to a mile, you’d think that Heathrow airport as an entity may be a little more self-aware when it comes to emissions.

Improve air quality

It seems that whenever we have to face a whole new financial charge for motoring, the well-worn “improve air quality and cut congestion” phrase is trotted out, as a ‘one size, fits all’ solution; whoever originally coined that phrase must be thanking their chosen deity on a daily basis for the gift that it was.

A fuel tax rise? To cut congestion and improve air quality. Ultra-low emission zone charges? We need to improve air quality and cut congestion. You want to drop a passenger at Heathrow to catch a flight? That’s a £15 charge to help improve the air quality and cut congestion.

Despite not being owned by the local authority or government, the plan to charge cars arriving at Heathrow on the ULEZ basis that’s been introduced in London will of course find favour with them – “the world’s first ultra-low emissions zone at an airport” has a certain environmentally friendly ring to it, and the fact that the M4, M25 and A30 major road networks are quite literally on the doorstep doesn’t make a difference; it’s the pollution and congestion in the drop-off zone that’s responsible for the southern air pollution.

Profiteering

To be clear, and fair, not every vehicle will be targeted, at least not until the third runway opens (when there will be a flat access charge to all passenger vehicles, taxis and mini-cabs) – just those vehicles that wouldn’t comply with the current limits for the London ultra-low emission zone. As to why Heathrow Airport Holdings feels that it’s truly necessary, the clue may lay in the fact that they haven’t yet submitted the final bid for the planning permission for expansion, with public consultation beginning on 18th June.

John Holland-Kaye, chief executive for Heathrow Airport states: “Heathrow expansion is not a choice between the economy and the environment, we must deliver on both. Today’s announcement shows that we will take the tough decisions to ensure that the airport grows responsibly”.

And with ‘improving air quality and reducing congestion’ being such a popular topic, a cynic (me, for instance) would wonder whether a few keywords and environmental catchphrases bandied about with the bid would help or hinder that bid?

Ground support and infrastructure

Of course, the next thought turns to ground support vehicles and aircraft ground handling; surely Heathrow airport will be upgrading every single vehicle in their fleet to comply with the latest emission standards?
With approximately 7,500 airside vehicles in use at Heathrow, which accounts for around 10% of the total NOx emissions from the airport, just ten percent of those vehicles are electric or emission-free at point of use. The largest NOx producer at ground level for Heathrow is the aircraft themselves – accounting for around 70% of the NOx produced at the site.

Creating a clean air zone is all very admirable, and while Heathrow is working hard to reduce their emissions overall, the fact is that charging older vehicles to enter their site, even just to drop passengers off, seems to relate more to profiteering than doing good – just the same as ULEZ and congestion charging, those motorists that don’t have a pick of vehicles, or can’t afford to upgrade to the cleanest, emission-free standards still need to use the service, and will be forced to pay no matter what.

It gets back to the old argument of why not incentivise rather than penalise? If you turn up in a non-ULEZ compliant vehicle, you must pay the standard fees, however, if you arrive in a cleaner vehicle that would comply with the ULEZ, you get reduced parking, or if just stopping for short time, perhaps even free parking.

The alternative, of course, is to use another airport (assuming they fly to the same destination), but that leads to further emissions due to miles driven, and it would only be transferring the problem to another site, a classic case of NIMBYism from Heathrow Airport Holdings, and it’s worth pointing out that the parent company also owns Glasgow Airport Limited and Southampton International Airport Limited – could this radical new plan be rolled out to other airports?

Do you think that Heathrow are doing this for the right reasons? Or is it a simple case of profiteering? Let us know in the comments.

To steal a car a generation ago meant a bit of muscle and a tool or two. In fact, in 1992 alone, UK vehicle crime spiked and thieves stole 620,000 vehicles from our roads. Over time, car security has increased but the fight against car thieves is far from done.

Home Office figures show car theft has doubled since 2014 and motor theft insurance payouts were at their highest in seven years at the start of 2019, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

Covering the cost

The ABI says insurers settled around £108 million—or £1.2 million a day—in claims in the first three months of the year; an increase of 22% on the same period last year. This works out as a payout every eight minutes. Insurers paid out on a huge 16,000 claims from January to March 2019, compared to 14,000 in 2018.

The cost of vehicle repairs, meanwhile, was £1.2 billion—the highest quarterly figure since the ABI started to collect this data in 2013—which the ABI puts down to higher costs for parts and technology.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) reported a nine per cent increase in motor vehicle theft offences in 2018 compared to 2017, with police recording 113,037 ‘theft or unauthorised taking of a motor vehicle’ crimes. That’s one vehicle reported stolen every five minutes. The total number of vehicle-related crimes also increased during 2018 by two per cent with 463,497 logged incidents.

Despite a rise in insurance payouts, the ABI reports the average price for motor insurance is £466—the lowest it’s been since 2017. The ABI thinks impending reforms to the Civil Liability Act legislation—aimed at reducing fraudulent whiplash claims—is part of the reason.

The legislation doesn’t come into force until April 2020 but insurers say they’re already reducing premiums because they’re expecting lower payouts.

Dangerously convenient

The ABI said part of the blame for the increase in car insurance payouts is the rise in keyless vehicle crime—also known as ‘relay theft/attack’, where, the Master Locksmiths Association say; thieves can get into a car via a relay attack in just 20 seconds.

Campaigners and politicians are now appealing to car companies to improve security, particularly in keyless cars, which have the convenient feature of letting you open and start your car without the need to take your key out of your pocket or bag.

Thatcham Research, which carries out research and testing for vehicle safety and security systems, developed the New Vehicle Security Assessment (NVSA) to assess brand-new vehicles and influence insurance group ratings.

This year is the first time that Thatcham Research has made public their results.

Laurenz Gerger, Policy Adviser for Motor Insurance at the ABI, said:

“Making these assessments public should spur motor manufacturers to take swift action to tackle this high-tech vulnerability.

“Meantime, consumers deserve to know how secure their cars are so they can take the necessary steps to reduce the likelihood that they become victims of crime.”

Thatcham Research gave five of the 11 models released in 2019 a ‘Poor’ security rating because their keyless entry/ignition, made them susceptible to relay theft.

Models that scored low on security:

Ford Mondeo
Hyundai Nexo
Kia ProCeed
Lexus UX
Toyota Corolla Hybrid

Without the keyless feature, Thatcham Research rated the overall security features as ‘Good’.

Richard Billyeald, Chief Technical Officer at Thatcham Research, said:

“Our calculations suggest that one per cent of all cars on the road today have keyless entry systems, but this technology is trickling down from the premium sector to more affordable cars.

“Until recently, all keyless systems used the exact same technology, so they were all vulnerable.

“Manufacturers are already working on new systems. A few new models already have set-ups that aren’t vulnerable to relay attacks. The functionality is the same, but they cannot be fooled by relay devices.”

Don’t get fobbed off

Thieves of keyless vehicles often work in pairs who buy a relay amplifier and a relay transmitter online.

Next, the pair targets a vehicle parked outside a house and, using the devices, can detect whether the car features keyless entry/ignition.

One criminal holds the transmitter near the car to capture the signal meant for the keyless fob. The other crook stands by the house with the amplifier to relay that signal to your fob. If the fob is close enough to the amplifier, the amplifier can detect, boost, and send the signal to the transmitter which acts as a key to your car. Police say the vehicles often get stripped to their parts, which the thieves then sell.

Apart from making sure you have locked your car, you can reduce the risk of it getting stolen by parking in a well-lit area and, once indoors, keeping your keyless fob away from windows or external doors. You can also keep your fob in a signal-blocking container—but test it by putting the key inside the container, then stand by your vehicle to make sure it doesn’t unlock. If your fob allows—switch off the signal. Check your manual or ask your dealer if it’s possible to disable the system.

If you want to go further with your security measures, you could buy a steering wheel lock, or even a wheel clamp to prevent thieves from driving away. Often the ‘hassle factor’ of these items are enough to cause criminals to sidestep your car. Fitting a tracker to your vehicle is another thing to consider.

Has anybody ever stolen your car? What do you think about keyless vehicles? Let us know in the comments.

“The action of taking property unlawfully from a person or place by force or threat of force”; the legal definition of robbery.

‘Robbery’ perhaps may be a little harsh, although if you consider the threat of having your car clamped, towed away or just punitive financial charges to be forceful, then it could work. If you’ve ever been caught at a car park without the correct change, only for the machine to tell you that ‘No Change Given’, you’ll have an understanding of the point.

If you’re paying for £1.60 worth of parking with two £1 coins, you’re not getting any extra, you don’t a credit for the next time, you can’t stay any longer (unless that rolls you into the next time slot), you’re just giving the parking operator free money, and they really do view it as free money.

NCPs free money

NCP typically make just under £700,000 per year from overpayments – all of those odd bits of payments that they hang on to when their machines won’t give change; between 2009 – 2012, NCP made an extra £2.44m just from these overpayments alone.

You could argue that the onus is on the driver to ensure that they have the correct money, which is a fair point, but sometimes life doesn’t work out that way, and with technology being as it is, why can’t there be card payments? Or smart parking using your smartphone?

It’s a lucrative little hustle for car park operators, it just happens that NCP are the biggest operator in the UK with over 600 sites managed or owned by them. It has been described as ‘fleecing the motorist’ by an RAC spokesman, and yet that still isn’t the ‘free money’.

Tax avoidance (gone wrong)

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) have recently been in court with NCP, with the car park operator as the claimant, after HMRC deemed that the £2.4 million pounds should be subject to payment of the 20% VAT tariff.

It seems as though NCP wanted to recoup the near £490,000 VAT payment to HMRC, and used the legal process of the High Court to try and do just that, after an earlier appeal went against them. The basis of their defence, and their subsequent appeal relied on the argument that this money wasn’t a direct payment for a service, that the parking had already been paid for, so the overpayment was just that. (A bonus?)
Lord Justices Newey, Patten, and Males dismissed NCPs claim, deeming that it was the total sum paid that covered the parking charge, and therefore, entirely valid for the HMRC to claim VAT on the figure.

Pete Williams from the RAC stated: “Everyone who has been unlucky enough to be fleeced in such a way by a car park operator will view this appeal with utter contempt” and Edmund King, AA president had similar views: “Drivers who have wanted to give left-over parking time to another motorist but been prevented by measures to stop tickets being transferred will have a wry smile on their face when they hear this court ruling”.

Have your cake and eat it too

Of course there is a simple solution to the problem; give change, take card payments or implement a system that can be accessed from an App – all three solutions would negate the issue, but at nearly £700,000 a year, the car park operators are unwilling to do that.

Perhaps the most galling part of this, is the ‘wanting your cake and eating it too’ greed of the operators; surely, if they’re making free money (remember, according to them, they’re not offering a service for this money), the least they could do is pay tax on it graciously.

The increase in technology means that we’re moving further toward a cashless society with each month that passes – paying for smaller items is as simple as a swipe of a card, or wave of a smartphone, and payments by card overtook cash payments (by volume) over a year ago, so carrying a pocketful of change isn’t as commonplace as it once was.

On top of that, councils are already making huge profit in parking charges, and it seems that we now have to contend with the operators themselves joining the fray and removing even more money unnecessarily unless you classify greed as a necessity.

It would be great to see the authority owned car parks tackling this problem on our behalf, but unfortunately, that’s just probably wishful thinking.

Should parking operators still be able to get away with such shoddy practice? Perhaps you’d like to see the regulations tightened up? Can you think of one aspect of motoring that isn’t taxed in some way? Let us know in the comments.

A report for the Department for Transport, released in November 2018, very clearly stated that reducing speed limits to 20mph does little for road safety or the environment, and in many cases, it can actually lead to greater pollution and a higher number of accidents.

And yet Mark Drakeford, First Minister for Wales says that Wales needs a default limit of 20mph across all residential roads, because trials in Cardiff and Swansea have shown some evidence that supports the theory of improving air quality, reducing accidents and restoring a sense of community.

When we reported on the story later in the month (November 2018), the conclusion was that the blanket 20mph zones were more about the perception of the neighbourhood, rather than any quantifiable benefit, and perhaps that’s what Drakeford is referring to with his “restoring a sense of community” comment.

Slow and safe

The theory behind 20mph zones is logical; slower speeds give more reaction time, mean less injury in the event of a collision (the campaign group ‘20’s Plenty for Us’ say that you’re seven times less likely to die from being hit by a car at 20mph than you are at 30mph) and lessens pollution through engines not being worked as hard.

With that said, the statistics behind 20mph zones are factual; speeds decrease by less than 1mph, distraction rates increase (either through complacency with the lower speed or constantly checking speeds) and pollution will only lessen under very strict circumstance which is virtually never achieved.

Besides the evidence indicating that 20mph zones don’t actually do much, there’s also the cost factor – millions will be spent to implement the low-speed zones, and unless they’re combined with further measures such as traffic calming, they simply won’t work.

Further still, it’s when you add in these extra traffic calming measures that the pollution levels rise due to the stop & start nature of the traffic.

Campaign groups

In amongst the evidence being put forward by the Welsh government is the report by Public Health Wales which claims there would be significant benefit to public health by dropping the limit from 30mph to 20mph; the problem being that the report was released two years before the DfT report stating otherwise.

There’s also the quote from the 20’s Plenty for Us group: “The introduction of 20mph limits in built-up areas has a small but significant impact on vehicle speeds and casualty numbers and when used in combination with other initiatives such as road design, enforcement, new technology and programmes of behaviour change, has the capacity to reduce maximum vehicle speeds towards the 20mph target and thus make major inroads into casualty levels “.

What they’re actually proposing isn’t just a simple lowering of the speed limit – re-education, limit enforcement and road design isn’t the work of a moment, and even with all of that, they’re viewing it as reducing the speed toward the 20mph target, not actually reaching that target.

Safe and sound

Road safety experts at the AA are unequivocally clear: A waste of money, that will rely on taxpayers and motorists to pay for the schemes that could in actual fact be more dangerous than what’s already in place; when the 20mph zones were introduced in England, many of the sites saw an increase in deaths and serious accidents rather than a reduction.

In December 2017, Bath and North East Somerset Council admitted that after introducing 13 new 20mph zones, seven of those 13 saw a significant rise in deaths and injuries, but that they wouldn’t be changing them back due to the cost – £871,000 to introduce, estimated at similar cost to reverse. The question you’d have to ask is how do they justify the decision?

Surely, if they can find £800,000 to ‘save lives’ and lower the speed limit, how can they now say that “actually, what we’ve implemented is causing increased loss of life, but we’re OK with not spending anymore money to rectify that problem”?

Of course, road safety is hugely important, we’d happily support a campaign to help prevent loss of life on the roads, but it has to be more than a whim, not based on an uninformed opinion of politicians that think they’re right because they’re politicians and therefore know what’s best in every situation.

We’ve already seen a huge reduction in rural roads that were once national speed limit because of ‘safety’, and now it seems that yet again, we have to conform with the lowest driving standards of people that would be far happier walking.

Do you think that 20mph zones work? Should they feature more on our road network? Or do you believe that this is just a hairbrained scheme thought up for political gain? Let us know in the comments.

Fuel prices have been increasing steadily and rose at their fastest rate in April since 2000 by 5.44 pence per litre for Unleaded. These huge increases are driving up the total cost of ownership for a motorist, combined with new congestion charges, rises in road tax and insurance premiums.

In order to offset rising prices, the need for fuel efficiency has become one of the most important considerations for motorists when buying a replacement new or used car. This is why hybrid vehicles have gained in popularity due to efficiencies gained in miles per gallon (i.e. MPG) from using an electric engine at slow speeds or idling when MPG is low and an efficient combustion engine for higher speeds when the MPG is high.

Fuel effiecient Ford

Car manufacturers have also made new petrol and diesel cars much more fuel efficient, with smaller engines and lighter cars that extend the effective range by hundreds of miles on less fuel, leading to a better MPG.

In a recent study by Euro Car Parts, they created a uniform driving distance test to see how much the top ten most purchased cars in 2018 would travel the furthest on a tank of petrol, purchased at the same price of £1.28 per litre. It found that the Ford Focus (5th most purchased car) came top with a stunning 1,112 miles on a tank of fuel costing £66.75, with an MPG of 97.2 miles and a cost per mile (i.e. CPM) of an amazing 5.9 pence.

The Ford Fiesta, which was the most purchased car in the UK in 2018 managed to achieve 821 miles on a tank of fuel costing £53.76, with an MPG of 88.8 miles and CPM of 6.4 pence. VW Polo (6th most purchased car) came top for the least amount of fuel bought to fill up at £51.20, delivering an MPG of 91.2 miles and CPM of 6.4 pence.

Not a natural skill

By contrast, the Vauxhall Corsa (3rd most purchased car) delivered a shocking 606.28 miles on a full tank costing £57.60, with an MPG of 61.2 miles and CPM of 9.5 pence. And perhaps most ironic of all, the smallest car by height is the MINI Hatch (7th most purchased car) it delivered 639.3 miles on a full tank costing £56.32, with an MPG of 61.2 miles and CPM of 8.8 pence, so clearly size of car does not determine fuel efficiency, but perhaps the MINI is heavier than its rivals, we’re not sure.

Commenting on the research, Chris Barella, Vice President of Sales at Euro Car Parts said: “Trying to travel on only one tank of petrol can actually be harder than it sounds. Driving efficiently doesn’t always come naturally!

“However, when purchasing a motor, it’s worth considering which cars are the most fuel efficient. The overall savings you could make could go towards the cost of a whole car after a few years!

“Not only is driving efficiently good for our pockets – it’s also better for the environment.”

Running costs

Achieving an optimum level of fuel efficiency is extremely beneficial to saving money running your car as this test demonstrates, but if we all did this we would be driving at 60 MPH on the motorway. Under real-world driving conditions, we all change our driving habits and fuel efficiency based on when we need it. If we’re running late to pick up the kids, for example, we might go a little bit more urgently than normal and saving money on fuel is not on your mind.

It is recommended when considering buying a new or used car, sit down and calculate the total cost of ownership, not only the finance but also running costs.

Here is a good free calculator: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-1633412/Calculator-True-cost-running-car.html
You might be really surprised as the results could show a more expensive car is actually better overall than the cheapest, which could be a false economy. Vauxhall Corsa, the cheapest of the top 10 cars purchased in the UK proves this.

As ever PetrolPrices is here to help members to save money on fuel. In our estimates, if you always go to the cheapest places wherever you are by using our alerts, app and website the average person will save over £200 a year.

What do you think about these results from Euro Car Parts? Are you a proud Ford Focus owner and can confirm it’s amazing fuel economy or are you an embarrassed MINI driver? Let us know in the comments below.