It was recently pointed out to me that tyres are now labelled on their shoulders with titles of Treadwear, Traction and Temperature. The first item has a numerical value against it and the other two have letters.

Does anyone know how these values are measured and how to relate to them? The highest value for treadwear that I have seen is 280 and the lowest 150.

I have a particular interest in tyre wear characteristics at the moment as my 11 month old 10000 mile MB C 200K has knackered a set of rear tyres and badly worn a set of front tyres after all four wheels were found to be out of alignment at its first warranty demanded service. Helpfully, MB provide a printout with before adjustment values and after adjustment, together with MB tolerances! Interestingly one front wheel had a negative value and the other a positive one. I admit that I should of paid attention re the tyres, but I didnt. Needless to say MB (and probably all other manufacturers) insist that this problem is the customers liability.

Thanks for any views offerred

Julian Read more

HELP! My BMW dealer has just called they have advised me that a solarnoid has gone within the cars SMG hydraulics pump. They advise me that the solarnoid cannot be replaced so will have to replace the whole pump unit approx cost £1000.
Do I just cough up or is there an alternative, I do not want to sell the car. Read more

Folks,
For the past few months on my daily commute between Basingstoke and Reading I've been taking particular notice of the bad driving habits that I am witness to.
Most of them can be lumped together as poor (or non-existant) lane-discipline or signalling, but a puzzling trend appears to be developing.

On any particular day it seems that a majority of the offenders are all doing the same thing. For example, this morning was:
"I'm going to turn right from the LH lane at this roundabout, but I won't signal".
Yesterday was:
"I'm going to turn right at the next roundabout so I'm staying in the RH lane at 25MPH for the next 3 miles".

This can happen multiple times on the same day then won't be seen again for a week or so.

I am beginning to call this my NoRaID (Non-Random Idiot Distribution) Theory and was wondering if this phenomenon is limited to the Hants/Berks area or is more widespread ?
Can there possibly be telepathic communication between some of these drivers or is there perhaps a website they use that stipulates what tomorrows infringement will be ?

Regards, Kevin... Read more

I am sending this to the Welsh Assembly, Any thoughts folks? Begins......

I write in response to your request for thoughts on how to improve road safety in Wales and, having read some of the options put forward on the WA website, I feel we are going to see more deaths on our roads if these anti-car proposals are implemented.

Having seen insulting attempts to brand car drivers as child killers, we then had the so-called ?successful trials? of speed cameras. The claimed successes were branded as ?lying with statistics? by university statisticians and, in one area, Essex, which was included in the ?successful trial? there has already been an increase in fatalities from 86 last year to 111 so far this year, as reported in the Essex Chronicle 16th November. In the original trial, three areas showed increases in fatalities of up to 18%. No mention of that, of course.

This is with the extra speed cameras, rigid enforcement of speed limits, road narrowing, roads humps and many other traffic calming measures, the same measures as appear to be suggested by the Welsh Assembly.

When politicians and others interfere with the 85th percentile speed of traffic there are always increases in accidents, as shown by studies world-wide.

I have seen it reported that there are proposals to fit speed limiters on cars. Utter madness. Are these people unaware of what happened when speed limiters were fitted to trucks? Accidents rose 26%. It would not stop a drunken lunatic driving past a busy school at 56 mph.

Are you not aware that according to Government publications, excess speed is a factor in just 7.3% of accidents? By concentrating on this, politicians are ignoring the causes of over 90% of accidents. Police tell us that the pedestrian causes 84% of pedestrian accidents. If a jaywalking law was introduced, I wonder how effective that would be in reducing accidents?

Then we have the politically inspired myth that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and we should all drive smaller cars. It has been estimated that since this policy was introduced in the USA, there have been an extra 46,000 road deaths. Larger, heavier cars are safer cars.

I have an e-mail from American climate scientist, Dr John Christy, the Alabama State climatologist, who was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which confirms that the scenarios (computer games/models) which showed the greatest warming due to carbon dioxide were ?forced into the IPCC report at a late stage by a few governments?.

Why would they do that? I read that industry has already paid an extra £200 million in "climate levies." "Pay us more taxes, we will change the weather" Does the name 'Canute' come to mind?

It is reported today that company car drivers are to be taxed on the amount of ?pollution? their cars produce. Carbon dioxide is a vital trace gas, essential to life on earth. It?s the bubbles in beer. Pollutant? What utter rubbish. Nature puts out 200 billion tons of CO2 via the natural carbon cycle whilst fossil fuel burning returns 6 billion tons to atmosphere from whence it came.

Whilst there were 3423 fatal accidents on our roads in year 2000, there were 4025 fatal accidents in the home. Medical accidents kill in excess of 30,000 stone dead every year according to the British Medical Journal.

I mention these facts to show that our roads are already comparatively safe;
?the safest in Europe, if not the world?, according to a Government report released this year.

We are aware of the Copenhagen Declaration from the EU that says, ?All decision makers at local, regional, national and European levels are urged to play their part in changing our culture of mobility?

Professor Garel Rhys of the Transport Studies section in Cardiff University Business School has said ? Plans to tax and penalise car use are leading Britain into a former Soviet style regime."

Studies have already shown that if some proposals I have seen to ?improve road safety in Wales? are implemented, there will be no decrease in accidents. An increase is more likely and the car owner will be further oppressed for safety reason at all.

Yours faithfully,

Alwyn Davies
P.S. Honest John, This should be worthy of article from your powerful pen. Just think, you could save the UK driver from all this taxation with a few key-strokes. Were you aware that global warming is political? Read more

Featured on BBC Points West Local News last night - www.hogline.co.uk
A website set up by an unidentified person to allow the reporting of bad driving.
Insurance companies will be charged to view the resulting info.
I assume the police will have free access but will they have the time to take an interest?
It is a membership service to try and stop spoof messages
Anybody think of any possible libel implications?

David Read more