A recent survey by black cab taxi app mytaxi has found that London drivers are more reliant on sat navs than drivers anywhere else in the UK. The survey estimates that London drivers waste on average 62 hours a year blindly following sat nav instructions into traffic jams and black-spots, with these “zombie drivers” further exacerbating traffic congestion on the roads.
The mytaxi survey found that a massive 88% of drivers in London use sat navs all the time, versus 76% for the national average. Further to this, one in five Londoners say they cannot find their way home in London without a sat nav. Meanwhile, a whopping 65% confess they would not be able to cope without a sat nav in an unfamiliar location outside of London.
Ignoring road conditions
Most worryingly of all, 62% say that they pay no regard at all to road signs, famous landmarks or even temporary lights and road signs, such as diversion signals if a road is closed, when following the sat nav in the car. This zombification has led to drivers blindly driving into dead ends, going the long way if re-routed by the sat nav or getting stuck in unnecessary traffic congestion because a sat nav fails to choose the quickest route, wasting up to 100 hours a year per driver.
The survey also found that 39% of all sat nav routes fail to reach the exact destination, while only 13% of the routes selected by sat navs were the quickest to the destination. In a sly dig at Uber drivers and other sat nav-reliant minicab services, mytaxi General Manager, UK, Andy Jones, comments:
“Sat nav technology is undoubtedly a huge help to many people but it is certainly not flawless and the results can be both frustrating and comical, as evidenced by the huge number of misadventures we have recorded.”
“We are proud to say that all mytaxi drivers have spent three years studying for The Knowledge memorising over 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks. There really is no substitute to real local knowledge when it comes to navigating through traffic and finding the quickest routes to a destination.”
How to tackle being a “zombie driver”
The obvious way to tackle being a zombie driver is to switch the sat nav off and try to navigate using road signs and maps, especially on common routes that you undertake. There is no substitute for knowing the back routes personally, as this can enable you get around the jams at peak times.
Some drivers have sat nav on by default because they think it will find a faster route if there is traffic congestion on the current route. However, although sat navs such as Google Maps often proclaim there is a “faster route available,” this is not always correct. That’s because these sat navs don’t analyse the current congestion level on the alternative route at the same time – at best they predict it based on historic traffic levels at that day and time, so it’s not a true, real time comparison between routes.
Another way to tackle your zombie driver status is to use an app like Waze. Waze is a community of drivers who aim to help other drivers to avoid traffic jams in real time. Much of the data you see in Waze does appear in Google Maps, but you can’t replace the feeling of Waze and the sense of finding a new route for the community of other drivers out there.
Are you a “zombie driver” and do you agree that sat navs take you into traffic jams rather than help you avoid them? Do you think you are over reliant on your sat nav – would you be able to cope with road signs and maps? Let us know in the comments below.
Historically, premium fuels such as super unleaded have kept a respectable distance of at least 5 pence a litre away from unleaded. In some cases, the difference has been as much as 15 pence per litre.
Recent data from PetrolPrices.com indicates that some supermarket brands are now bucking this trend and offering super unleaded at only a few pence more than the cheapest unleaded stations in the area. Indeed, if you are smart about where you buy, you can now get super unleaded fuel “cheaper” than unleaded fuel in some parts of the UK.
For example, as of Monday this week, the cheapest super unleaded station in the UK is a Sainsbury’s station in Tamworth, recorded at 114.7 pence per litre. That’s 1.7 pence per litre cheaper than the national average price for unleaded, which stands at 116.4 pence per litre.
The news will delight premium fuel converts and those who drive high-performance vehicles that need fuels on a higher-octane rating to ensure peak performance and protect the engine against unnecessary wear and tear.
The charts below illustrate that over the last few months, Tesco and Sainsbury’s appear to be selling super unleaded at very competitive prices, close to the average price for unleaded from main petrol retailers. PetrolPrices.com believes this is a conscious tactic by the supermarkets to try to lure the most profitable customers into buying at the supermarkets.
Petrol retailer v supermarkets average prices April – May- June
Unleaded
April (p)
Change (p)
May (p)
Change (p)
June (p)
BP
120.4
1.6
118.8
1.5
118.5
Shell
120.1
1.6
118.5
1.5
118.1
Esso
119.3
1.7
117.6
1.5
117.3
Texaco
119.4
1.8
117.6
1.5
117.4
Gulf
119.7
1.5
118.2
1.5
117.9
ASDA
113.9
1.3
112.6
-0.1
112.7
Sainsburys
115.6
1.5
114.1
0.3
113.8
Tesco
115.4
1.1
114.3
0.2
114.1
Morrisons
114.5
1.7
112.8
-0.1
112.9
Super unleaded
April (p)
Change (p)
May (p)
Change (p)
June (p)
BP
132.1
1.5
130.6
0.1
130.5
Shell
130.7
1.8
128.9
0
128.9
Esso
131.2
1.4
129.8
0.3
129.5
Texaco
129.4
1.5
127.9
-0.4
128.3
Gulf
131.8
1.2
130.6
1.2
129.4
ASDA
N/A
0
N/A
0
N/A
Sainsburys
120.7
1.6
119.1
0
119.1
Tesco
120.6
1.2
119.4
0.3
119.1
Morrisons
N/A
0
N/A
0
N/A
A famous rule of buying psychology is that if someone buys from the same place more than three times, it becomes habit forming and generates loyalty. In this instance, it seems that the Tesco and Sainsbury’s are trying to not only create habits for premium fuel users to switch away from the main retailers, they are also trying to convert existing unleaded fuel users to “trade up” with very little change in cost (it works out at roughly £1-2 extra per fill up).
Benefits of premium fuels
Premium fuels are refined to be at a higher octane rating than standard fuels, which burn more in the engine, thus creating more power and improved fuel efficiency. They also contain additives that not only clean the engine and make it perform better, but also protect against wear and tear inside the engine itself.
It is a widely accepted practice that every month you should “treat your car” to a tank of premium fuel, as this is will improve the performance and long-term health of the car. It seems that this is now more cost effective than ever, given the recent price changes led by Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
How and where to find price anomalies
Using our fuel price comparison tool is, of course, the best way to find these price anomalies. They appear all over the UK. The best way to check is to try to price search between home and the workplace, or regular weekly trip locations. You should notice a marked difference in pricing between affluent areas with fewer stations and locations where there is more local competition, especially high concentrations of supermarkets clustered together.
To give you an example, in Guildford the cheapest unleaded price is at Sainsbury’s Burpham, at 115.9 pence per litre. Six miles away in Aldershot, Tesco is selling super unleaded at 117.9 pence per litre. That’s 2 pence per litre difference, equivalent to a £1 increase in cost for a vastly superior fuel if filling a standard 55-litre fuel tank.
Can you get super unleaded cheaper than unleaded?
As mentioned earlier, in some parts of the UK the cost of super unleaded is lower than the UK average for unleaded fuel. Thus, if you’re driving on a long journey, you can take advantage of the lower costs versus what you pay locally.
You can also use vouchers and/or gift cards when you purchase super unleaded to get it at a cheaper price than unleaded.
Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s provide money off fuel vouchers. You can receive these when you spend a certain amount of money in-store, or earn Clubcard points on fuel to get a discount that is sent in vouchers three months later. When you enter the store, it’s also worth visiting the customer service desk and asking if there are any fuel promotions running. For example, at Christmas, Morrison’s was offering 10 pence a litre discount on fuel if you spent £50 in store, so it’s well worth asking.
Have you found somewhere where the price of super unleaded is close to or cheaper than unleaded? Do you think petrol retailers try to confuse us with their pricing? Let us know in the comments below.
The Ifbattery is set to revolutionise charging times for Electric Vehicles, meaning that owning one could actually be practical for all the demographics, not just the handful that want to do the right thing.
Transportation for the masses is changing, Electric Vehicles (EV’s), Hybrids, BEV’s and PHEV’s are a serious part of many manufacturers plans for the future, but right now, they are flawed.
Battery prices, limited range and lengthy charge times are just three of the problems that manufacturers currently face, but technology developed by a team at Purdue University in the U.S. is about to change at least one of those; charge times for the battery could be reduced to the same length of time as it takes to fill up a regular tank.
Minutes not Hours
Plug-in vehicles currently account for around 0.10% of worldwide car sales, and whilst the likes of Tesla are pushing the technological boundaries, reducing costs and developing products that you’d actually want to own because it’s a great product, that figure is surely set to rise.
The first generation of plugins would see you being able to run your daily commute and back before needing to find a power-source to plug-in to, and once you’d found that source, you’d be there a while – an hour’s charge for ten miles wasn’t unheard of.
As with all technology, once it’s adopted, people start pushing development and improving the whole experience, in the case of electric vehicles, this has brought prices down, extended the driving range and to some extent, reduced charging times – the Tesla Supercharger station can give a 100% charge in just forty minutes.
IF-Battery
The fact remains that charging times for these vehicles means that a plan is still required if you’re looking to travel any distance – you can’t just hop out and fill up before continuing with your journey, you’ll need to think about where you’re stopping and for how long; a coffee? Lunch? Dinner … Overnight?
Welcome to the world of modern battery technology – the Ifbattery.
The Ifbattery is what’s known as a ‘flow’ battery, as with many great or revolutionary inventions, the idea behind it sounds quite simple; the battery uses fluid electrolytes to re-energise the spent battery fluid – you drain the spent fluid and replace with new.
It’s hoped that the existing petrol station infrastructure (tanks, pipes, pumps etc) could be used to store, remove and fill the batteries, meaning that a changeover to this new tech could be relatively simple and low-cost.
Click below to watch more on the technology.
As a Consumer
At the moment, this new technology isn’t going to improve matters directly, although with research teams working hard to improve the situation, you know that these developments are in the pipeline (excuse the pun!).
There will come a day when electric vehicles are able to compete on price, range and practicality with traditionally fossil-fuelled vehicles, but that day isn’t quite here yet. If you’re looking to switch fuels for your vehicle, you’re going to need to wait for another few years before this type of technology is widely available.
In the meantime, prices for electric vehicles (and the associated hybrids) are becoming more affordable, they are just beginning to compete with the regular cars, if you can live with the extended charge times, they could well be worth looking at as an alternative mode of transport.
Is electric power something you’d consider instead of fossil fuels? What would make your decision easier? Let us know in the comments section below.
The cost of crude oil per barrel fell back below $50 the moment that Donald Trump announced that the USA would withdraw from the Paris accord on climate change. The move has prompted speculation that the US will ramp up both coal and shale oil production further, leading to higher carbon emissions and lower fuel prices at the pumps.
In the short term, the fall in the cost of oil should translate to a further 2p a litre reduction in the cost of fuel within two weeks, a £1 saving per fill up. While this is a timely boost to those on low incomes, the long-term environmental cost of losing the US from the climate change agreement is very harmful, experts believe we’re witnessing the unravelling of 25 years of environmental work in one US presidential administration over the next 5 years.
In case you missed it, here is Trump’s full withdrawal video:
Trump and Big Oil
As speculated several months ago, this is part of Trump’s ongoing vision to support the American Midwest, decimated by low investment in job creation and the loss of jobs from traditional gas, oil and coal production industries, closed during the Obama administration to meet Paris Agreement targets.
The harsh truth is that this decision isn’t being done to support jobs, it’s to support the coal, oil and gas industry of America. They were major backers of the Trump presidential campaign and are now looking to get their money back by encouraging the US government to lift all the restrictions they’ve been operating under for a decade.
As well as lifting domestic restrictions on coal, oil and gas production, there is a global power play at work here by what Trump is doing. The USA is 3rd in the list of global oil producers behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. Saudi Arabia has effective control of 65% of the world’s oil supply under the OPEC group of 14 member states. Almost 18 months ago, OPEC and Russia deliberately stifled the growth of American shale oil producers by producing high volumes of oil, forcing the global cost of oil down and in turn hitting the incomes of hundreds of low volume US producers.
What we are seeing now is the fightback of US gas and oil interests supported by the US government against OPEC and Russia’s aims to limit supply and keep the oil price higher. This can only mean in the short term global supplies of oil will be greater than demand, so we could see fuel prices fall a little further but not likely to reach the £1 a litre mark of Dec 2015.
What happens now?
However, while these price declines are good news, one cannot avoid feeling a sense of despair about the Paris Agreement and what will happen now that the world’s biggest economy has decided to withdraw from a plan to tackle climate change.
This has similarities to the UK government’s attitude to tackling pollution in our cities. If the leaders of the world are not serious about tackling these issues head on, then what chance do we, or future generations have coping with climate change and pollution in the future?
Is it worth having lower cost fuel if it means the environment is worse off? If the US doesn’t follow climate change rules, then why should the UK government meet pollution targets? Let us know in the comments below.
In an important move designed to tackle driver distraction caused by mobile phone use while driving, Apple announced yesterday that their latest operating system for iOS11 will contain a new “do not disturb while driving” mode. The new measure, announced at the Apple Developer Conference yesterday, has already been hailed as one that will save lives across the world and is likely to prompt Google to roll out a similar mode for Android devices.
Apple already know when a device is in a moving vehicle, connected to Bluetooth or a cable to the car, so the mode can turn itself on automatically without needing to be prompted. This mode also impacts iPhone users who are passengers too, who can disable the mode following a set process.
Do Not Disturb While Driving Mode will block all notifications (including texts, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) and incoming calls if not connected to an in-car phone system. It will also lock the screen so a driver is unable to access ANY apps while moving.
A small handful of apps WILL work while driving, Google and Apple Maps will function, but you will be unable to input a new destination or change the search in Maps while still in motion. Some large app companies that deliver transportation services have expressed concerns that this creates a monopoly on driver attention if only a few apps can work on iPhones.
Users also have the option of setting up an auto reply so that if anyone calls or contacts you while driving, it automatically sends a message by text or messaging platform to say that you are driving and unable to respond now, try later.
The announcement follows a legal case 6 months ago where Apple was sued for not providing a do not disturb mode and a fatal accident occurred while someone was on Facetime while driving. Almost 25% of all fatal US road accidents are caused by mobile phone use and it’s on the rise.
Research published by the British Medical Journal link: (http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7514/428) shows that 60% of all accidents last year involved at least one driver using a mobile phone for a call or text, which is a huge reason why the police are getting tough on penalty points and fines for mobile phone use at the wheel.
I guess the first question on our minds is how long has Apple has taken to do this and why do it now? It doesn’t seem likely that they will be introducing this mode just because of one court case 6 months ago. It seems far more plausible that Apple can see that as the rate of accidents caused by mobile phone use rises, perhaps to the 60% rate of the UK, they need to put this feature in now to avoid any legal cases held against them in the years to come.
It will undoubtedly save some lives, but if passengers can easily get past the mode then what is the point, as some drivers will just pretend to be passengers surely? Isn’t this more of a gesture rather than a zero tolerance “iPhones will not operate when a vehicle is moving”
It also opens a wider issue about whether Google will follow Apple’s lead and roll out a similar mode on their operating system. Also will we start to see car manufacturers employ similar restrictions on their new app based dashboard consoles?
What do you think about this announcement? Is it great news and long overdue or do you think it’s just Apple trying to avoid big legal challenges in the future? Will Google follow and will it make car firms restrict in-car systems the same way? Let us know in the comments below.
As part of Operation Snap from October 2016 onwards, North Wales Police has been accepting dash cam, helmet cam and mobile phone footage from the public. Of the 100 clips submitted, 80 have led to driving convictions, in some cases leading to prison time for some drivers caught out by this new approach.
It comes at a time when there are 27% fewer traffic police on Britain’s roads than 2010, according to Home Office data. With the UK’s roads becoming increasingly lawless places to drive and with fewer police on the roads due to government cuts, the installation of a dash cam is a great way to protect a driver from false accident claims, with some insurers also offering 20% discounts on policies if you have a dash cam installed.
Dash cams as a video witness
But it seems that an interesting by product of dash cams is that they can also act as additional eyes and ears on the roads for the police, Operation Snap has proved such a success that other police forces across the country are looking at rolling out something similar in their own regions.
In a recent article from Auto Express, North Wales Police figured out that it took 15 hours of police time per incident to process and prosecute for each driving offence if a traffic police office caught someone in person. As camera footage is now being treated as an eye witness account of a driving offence, the amount of time to deliver a process and prosecute a penalty has tumbled to less than an hour.
The process of uploading the clips takes minutes and is very easy. Public generated video footage for driving offences is now accepted in court as evidence and covers a range of areas such as driving without due care and attention, dangerous driving, using a mobile phone at the wheel, improper control of vehicle and running red lights or contravening other traffic systems, such red line zones and bus lanes.
“The operation will enable our communities to help us assist in a key policing priority, to continue to keep the roads of South Wales safe. Our officers will still be policing the roads in our force area 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but we know that members of the public are keen to help, and I am pleased that with the support of Go Safe, we can provide an easier way to submit footage and images either whilst travelling as a passenger, or using the footage of dash cams that can submitted later when the driver has finished their journey.”
Jeremy Vaughan, Assistant Chief Constable of South Wales Police
Is this the future of traffic policing?
Only 2 penalties from 80 issued have been appealed thus far, as the power of video evidence is almost impossible to deny. Capturing offenders is a good thing and will perhaps make some drivers think twice about offending knowing a dash cam might be recording even if the police are not there.
However, using video footage as evidence of traffic offences is fine to an extent but it fails to hide what seems to be a bigger concern, that is a large decline in traffic police due to Government austerity measures. We told you in an article 2 months ago about how we think that Britain’s roads are becoming more binary. On the major arterial routes, they are becoming heavily monitored with cameras and ANPR every mile using “smart motorways” and then the clear majority is becoming more lawless and dangerous places to drive than ever before.
As the police pull away from the front line, is the concept of “crowd-sourced police intelligence” using dash cams the future of policing? Are dash cams going to be made compulsory for all drivers and would it be a law that all drivers must allow police access to that video evidence or face prosecution themselves? It sounds like something out of a sci fi novel but the way it’s going it could be a reality within 10 years.
Do you think this is a great way to support the Police on Britain’s roads or a sad indictment of the current state of the Police caused by years of Government cuts? Let us know in the comments below.
Plug-in cars make up less than 0.10% of all car sales globally, it’s a tiny fraction of the market that ‘Big Oil’ deems to be insignificant enough to be ignored, in fact, OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) believes that by 2040, the Electric Vehicle market might just make up 1 percent of all new cars being sold. Is this naivety, bravado or stupidity?
Oil crisis
Given that many of the big oil suppliers are already in financial difficulty (yes, really), why aren’t they doing more about the inevitable crisis that they will face? Over half of the global oil demand is driven by transportation needs, agencies such as Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that 2028 will be the year of reckoning for the big oil producers, but before that, we should see an impact on the number of barrels produced as soon as 2023.
In all honesty, the figures being stated are a little hazy, much of it depends on what perspective you’re viewing them from, but sources suggest that Electric Vehicles could displace up to 2 million barrels of oil each day by 2023.
This number of barrels is significant; a similar number of ‘overstocking’ is said to have caused the oil crash in 2014, in which a number of oil producers went bankrupt, whilst others looked for bailouts from state or investors. The debts incurred are partly to blame for oil prices today, some reports suggest that the debts run into $trillions.
The rise of the electric vehicle
As with any technology, the wider the adoption, the cheaper it becomes. A significant cost of any electric vehicle is the power source, but prices for batteries fell by 35 percent last year, and with the likes of Elon Musk (Tesla) et al all working hard to develop affordable yet use-able vehicles, the prices will only come down further.
Studies show us that 2040 should see practical, long-range Electric Vehicles on sale for the equivalent of $22,000 USD in today’s money, it’s expected that they will have a 35% market share of all new vehicles being sold. Somewhat different to OPEC’s claim of just one percent.
It’s true that the current generation of fully electric vehicles leaves a little to be desired in some departments, but we’ve gone from ugly, slow and impractical to fast (very fast in fact), stylish and a ‘want’ within just a decade – where will the next ten years take us?
OPEC
It seems that OPEC’s insistence on the failure of the electric vehicle is akin to sticking their fingers in their collective ears whilst shouting “la la la, we’re not listening” and hoping that it all goes away. This almost definitely isn’t going to happen.
However you view EV’s, you can guarantee that they are very much here to stay and will become an integral part of our daily lives, just as society relies on fossil fuels in today’s world, you can bet that we’ll feel the same in another decade or so about EV’s.
What do you think will happen to oil companies in the future? Have OPEC wildly underestimated the appeal for electric vehicles? Let us know in the comments below.
It wasn’t that long ago that the media was full of stories about the mis-selling of PPI, with banks being the prime targets for vitriol and blame (with good reason, some would say).
Now, the PPI scandal has gone quiet and many of the legal firms that were ‘only too happy to help’ (for a 30% fee) are now idly twiddling their thumbs, looking for the next big scandal. Could PCP finance be that scandal?
Financial Conduct Authority
There is of course a little more to the headline. It’s actually the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that has started investigating whether there is a case to answer.
The UK car finance industry is worth approximately £40 billion, second only to property mortgages. That makes it big business and, just as in the world of property, close scrutiny has revealed a number of issues that potentially need addressing. One of those is Personal Contract Plan (PCP) finance.
We should point out that there is nothing wrong with PCP financing when done responsibly – it’s a great way of being able to afford a new car without having to pay to own it outright and the monthly payments are usually significantly less than a traditional loan or hire purchase agreement.
This is because the value of the car is taken into account when the payments are calculated. As the car will still have a value at the end of the agreement (unless it is written off), this value can be used as the final payment; you won’t actually own the car.
PCP versus hire purchase
The mis-selling time bomb relates mainly to the fact that many PCP contracts may have been sold without full explanations of interest rates, either through deliberate mis-information or ignorance. Neither of those excuses will stand up in a court of law.
There is also an element of massaging the final valuation of the car, which leads the purchaser to believe there will be ‘profit’ at the end of the agreement, though in all honesty that’s a smaller issue.
According to the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers, there were approximately one million PCP agreements made last year. There are no statistics (yet) to tell us how many of those may be subject to a mis-selling investigation, but even if that figure is as low as 10%, that’s still a huge number of people affected.
The crux of the matter is really rather simple: were people told that they would end up paying more interest through a PCP agreement than they would through a traditional hire purchase agreement? Or that the ‘value’ of the car would be more than the actual value of the car?
Have you been affected?
At present, there is little to be done if you find yourself in that situation. However, understanding your agreement and figures involved could be an essential part of making a successful claim against your broker.
Our advice is to keep checking back here for updates to the situation. In in the meantime, revisit your paperwork and try to get an understanding of whether you could be affected by this type of mis-selling.
New figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers show that sales of new diesel cars plummeted by 27.3% in April. The drop is likely to be in response to a proposed crackdown on the use of diesel cars, which is expected to take place after the UK’s general election.
The policy manifestos of all three major political parties contain plans to encourage diesel drivers off the road. The most extreme of these was the Liberal Democrat manifesto, which proposes banning all diesel cars by 2025 should the Lib Dems be elected.
It’s no wonder the government is under pressure to tackle the pollution crisis – London exceeded its target pollution levels for the whole of 2017 in the first five days of the year alone. British courts recently forced the government to publish a watered-down pollution plan, which contains details of new toxicity charges and clean air zones for some of the highest-polluting areas of the UK.
The uncertainty around future policy in relation to diesels, and lack of clarity on whether there will be a diesel car scrappage scheme, is evidently causing many motorists to avoid buying diesel cars.
Conversely, it seems there is another group of Diesel drivers who are entrenched and sticking to driving their diesel cars, come what may in terms of future charges.
Annual diesel sales down
Overall sales for diesels have only dipped slightly this year, going down by 1% compared to last year. This does, however, make for dim viewing when you consider that the industry overall has grown by 6%, with petrol car sales increasing by 11.5%. This seems to suggest that concerned consumers are opting to buy petrol vehicles instead of diesels.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) states that there were 1,285,160 diesel registrations in the UK in 2016, versus 1,318,707 petrol car registrations. With the production of diesel cars making up an estimated £26.4bn of Britain’s economy, encouraging people away from diesels (or even worse, banning them) would be a major risk to the economy.
Jaguar Land Rover, one of Britain’s most iconic car manufacturers, claims that nine out of ten cars it sells are diesel. It’s not hard to imagine what the impact of banning diesel vehicle sales could be on the business.
In the long term, drivers continuing to steer clear of buying new diesel cars could lead to job losses and potential plant closures. Not only this, but credit rating agency Fitch has warned that a crackdown on diesel cars might lead to a ‘rapid and large shift in demand,’ which could hit the used car market, causing the value of all owned diesel vehicles to plummet.
Does diesel do that much harm?
Contrary to what the recent anti-diesel press may be suggesting, new diesel cars produce very low emissions and emit next to no harmful toxins. The much-publicised statistic showcasing the fact that 9,500 Londoners die every year from diesel-related pollution is caused by older, pre-Euro 4 vehicles, including heavy goods vehicles and public transport such as buses and taxis.
At PetrolPrices.com, we believe that discouraging drivers to purchase diesel cars will harm manufacturing profits and damage – perhaps irreparably – one of Britain’s most flourishing industries.
Are you concerned about the impact moving customers away from diesels could have on the car industry? Do you think diesel is being misrepresented? Is this negatively affecting the value and future sales of a perfectly good fuel? Let us know in the comments.
British roads are some of the busiest in Europe and we are sure that many of our members have seen some strange things happen whilst driving.
Well, this is your chance to share those experiences with the rest of our members and don’t hold back. It is worth highlighting though that we will be moderating the comments just to make sure they’re not too strange!
Here are some of the strange experiences from the PetrolPrices team:
“Whilst driving up the M6 near Coventry saw a coach in the opposite carriageway completely on fire, the smoke was so great that you could not drive past so drivers had to stop in their lanes whilst waiting for the smoke to clear. It was like a scene from a war film and very scary and strange to watch a coach completely on fire”
Story from Jason, Managing Director
“In my local town centre, an elderly driver got confused with the sat-nav and they took a bit of a wrong turn… down a flight of concrete steps. The car was completely ruined and the chap was rather stressed by the whole ordeal. Since then, the council have put bollards in front of the steps to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.”
Story by Nick in Marketing
“Probably the strangest thing I’ve seen would have to be a car rolling onto a roof in a road tightly packed with cars on either side. Simply had clipped one that was parked and rebounded off of another few before finally tipping up and rolling over. The driver was quite shocked but at the same time quite puzzled about her own effort.”
Story by Josh in Technical
Add yours in the comment section below and let’s celebrate the unique and strange nature of the British road network and what happens upon it.
