Taken from the VW website

". And when you realise that it's backed up by front and side airbags and ABS (anti-lock breaking system) as standard, you begin to understand why we think the New Polo is a pretty tough customer. " Read more

HJ has always warned us of the huge cost of replacing a lost red key. A friend in the trade reckons he can get a local lock specialist to produce one for about £25. Is he likely to be right, or will it not do the business? Read more

I have been astounded in the recent bad weather at the number of morons (no other word) driving without lights at dawn & dusk (7:30-8:00 a.m. for example). I can never understand why they don't twig that the cars coming towards them are easier to see with lights....then apply the same principle & think "Hmmm, I might be easier to see if I had my lights on, perhaps I'll just flick the switch & avoid an accident". But no....and why are they always the invisible colours (grey, silver, black etc)? Is this attitude prevalent in all parts of the UK? And WHY are people so stupid - why DON'T they switch them on?

And on the same vein, why do all Land Rover drivers use only their pinhead sized sidelights until it's pitch black? Read more

Don't know whether it's me or not, but did the paint finish on the Hyundai Coupe look like orange peel?


Andy Read more

Interview in todays paper with Richard Brunstrom, North Wales Police Chief and the leader in the rush to put a speed camera on every corner.

Note the reference to "You buggers". Surely he is not suggesting that a driver doing 32 mph in a 30 is on a par with sexual deviants.

Discuss.

Rhyl Visitor February 6th 2002. Report begins??..

Brunstrom on speeding.

Richard Brunstrom is fond of citing 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill?s views on civil liberty ? that people?s freedoms should only be constrained to prevent them harming others.

?If you choose to damage your body, that really is a matter for yourself. If you choose to damage society then there is a different issue in play.?

?If you choose to damage yourself in a car, society probably has much less interest ? or right to intercede. If you slice sideways into a bus-stop and kill my wife and family , then I take a very different view?

?We have got lots of rock-solid evidence now that speed kills. We know exactly how much speed kills, we know why it kills, we know where it kills. Around 3500 people die every year on Britain?s roads, the equivalent of 10 jumbo jets crashing.

Speed is the major cause in about one third of all road crashes, killing about 1000 every year and injuring 100,000 more. Our society ? including the police ? have tolerated road deaths too readily in the past.?

?We take a great deal of interest in drunk driving but not enough in speeding which is a bigger killer. Now we are re-evaluating our methodology. This is not a hopeless case, we can save lives here. We?ve worked out how?

?In North Wales extra cameras will focus on routes where excessive speed has contributed to the number of road casualties. With the drugs debate, I say perhaps we ought to think about changing the law.

With speeding, I?m saying the law is already there and you buggers won?t comply with it. If you drive like a prat, you have got to expect the police to come looking for you.

Brunstrom on controversy.

Does our Chief Constable enjoy controversy? I wondered? (wrote the reporter)

? I am mischievous?, he acknowledges with a grin. I have to recognise that in myself. I do enjoy controversy, almost for it?s own sake, in a naughty boy sort of way?

As an appointed person, I don?t have to worry about an electorate. I can therefore say the unthinkable in a way a politician is quite rightly unable to do.?

? I think I have a duty to sit here and think about these issues and put them in the public arena to move the debate on and particularly with things like speeding, to say ? Look, I know as your professional senior police officer that I can keep you alive, and it?s my duty to persuade you to change your mind, to make you behave differently, so that more of us are alive in the future. My job is to keep citizens alive?. Read more