February 2006
On my daily commute on the M6, M62 and M602, I regularly come across the new Highways Agency?s Traffic Officers in their new highly visible Shoguns, Discoverys etc etc.
Now, I?m led to believe that the purpose of the Officers is to improve traffic flow by clearing accidents and obstructions quickly. In the few months that they seem to have been operating the effect on traffic seems to be quite the opposite.
Example ? a couple of days this week there have been broken down cars on the hard shoulder. Each time there has been one of these Traffic Officer vehicles parked behind with Blackpool Illuminations switched on. Their nice shiny cones and ?keep right? signs are placed behind, on the hard shoulder.
My question is ? why? The initial effect is everyone slows down to have a rubberneck thinking there must be an accident, when all it is is a broken down car. Knock on effect, especially on the M62 or M6 is a very long tailback.
In the days before this scheme everyone would have ignored the broken down car and traffic would be flowing as normal. I appreciate it is dangerous to be on the hard shoulder, but is the Highways Agency answer to this ?slow down traffic so it?s at a standstill. Nothing will hit the broken down car then??
Rant over?
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Hi,
We are travelling from Heathrow 11am Monday morning and are travelling from Exeter on Sunday night & staying over at a travelodge on the M4 (Heston between Jct 2 & 3 Eastbound).
Not knowing this area at all, can anyone advise of the traffic on a Monday monday c8am (horrendous I assume?) as we need to get on the M4 Eastbound to Jct 2 & then head back westbound so we can come off a Jct 3 to park at one of the long stay Heathrow car parks in that area.
Also, is the M5-M4 the best route from Exeter given that the hotel in on the motorway.
Any advice from experienced commuters of this areas would be much appreciated!
MM Read more
There's a Travelodge on both sides of the M4 at Heston. You might think of staying at the westbound lodge and doing the 'loop' (up to J2 and back to Heston) on Sunday instead.
Traffic may still be heavy (end of half-term for some) but at least you'll get that bit out of the way sooner.
After my car was severely damaged in 1981 by a passing car when parked by the side of the road in a 30 limit I only park on the road as a very last resort. Is anyone else this choosy about where they park?
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L\'escargot. Read more
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Sounds like the system in use near Anfield and other football
grounds; 'Watch your car for a fiver Mister?'
The trick is of course to tear the fiver in half
and supply the second half when the car is unharmed!
>>
Friend of mine from the Wirral once parked up for shopping in Liverpool & was asked the same thing "Watch your car etc......."
Wherupon he pointed to his large dog that was asleep in the back
of his estate car and said - No thanks, no one will try to steal the car with him in there - to which the scallly replied " yeah mate - but can he put out fires!"
Hi All,
Need your advise... as new to this forum and first time please be easy with moi...
I'm looking to purchase a new car as at present i'm driving a .... wait for it
Golf M3 L reg old hey :~((
As i'm bored of this now, i want my dream car or as close as, a BMW. I'm not rich so i can't afford to pay cash up from, installment yeah...
Also been a women, with out a man... i need ur advise...
So how could i try to go about persuing this dream...
All your time and help would be greatly appreciate, Thank you.
Meanwhile i shall look forward hearing from you soon.
Thanks Again
xx
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Certainly at £300 a month you can afford a used one, but it's likely to be 7 or 8 years old. I'm not convinced that it's wise to go for an M3 after a Golf. The car is an immensely fast 3.2 litre sports car and it's rear wheel drive.
Make sure you can afford insurance (on car and life) before you buy.
Hi, I have a 53 reg astra 1.7 dti. It went into vauxhall in Sept/Oct as it had been misfiring, they reprogrammed the ecu but that didn't make any difference. Vauxhall replaced the cat converter as this had gone! (nothing to do with the misfiring, just incredibly noisy) it still misfired when we got the car back, not a lot but it was still there, its going back into vauxhall to be looked at again, has anyone else been experiencing this? it doesn't matter what gear its in it will still misfire and at anytime. It also seems to have a dead spot on the throttle.
Thanks Read more
Airflow meter?
Looking at the Navman PIN 570 sat nav and pda all in one. Any one give me some tips on the best satnav with itergrated pda? Read more
I also use a hp 4700 which is the dogs danglies of PDAs at the moment.
I use it in conjunction with a gps cradle that also amplifies the volume of the PDA and recharges it. I leave the cradle fixed into the car using a dashboard 'clip'. This means I only need to carry about the PDA and it slots very neatly into the cradle. (I know some may say that this is an invitation to theiving gits but in 18 months parking the car in some really dodgy spots, including the work car park I hav'nt had any bother, (dont get too carried away by the hysteria created by a few media articles that appeared over a period of two days roughly six months ago).
It also means I only need one power supply wire which is easy to hide.
This is 100% stable with tomtom3 which I legally own (not so with tomtom5 which I downloaded to try then ditched because of incompatibility) and I use the excellent free speed camera database that updates monthy.
The only gripe I have is that tomtom does not take into account what side of the road you are travelling on when warning you about speed cameras, unlike say a road angel.
Sure this has been covred before, but searching hasn't provided the answer - so here goes:
Just acepted a new job, where the firm provides an amount of net dosh each month to pay to their fleet provider (they also have a cash alternative, but I prefer the certainty of no bills and also if the job doesn't work out being able to hand it back).
This of course means no tax to pay, so basically I can add what i would be paying in tax to their net contribution to see what I can get.
They provide £360 a month net, and let's assume I bung in £150-200 a month as well (currently paying £150 tax on my current motor). anyone have experiences of these schemes where maintenance and insurance is included? what would say £550 a month get? I've had a look at a few PCP sites but can't seem to find one with insurance included.
thanks all! Read more
My allowance of £360 is actually £7200 a year extra salary
net of tax and NI, I think. Not sure what
they do about business mileage - but i don't expect to
do much to speak of.
I guess this is where the scheme could fall down for the empoloyer - they would expect to retain your business mileage tax rebate. The worst scenario would be someone who did very high private miles - the company would have to pay the excess mileage charge but would have no tax refund to offset it.
I think the assertion that these eco schemes are approved may be overstating it a little. You have to register any tax avoidance (note - not evasion!) scheme with HMRC and they keep a close eye on it. An indication of how dodgy it might be is TSB's statement on their website that they 'have recruited consultants from the main four accounting firms, with nearly 30 years Inland Revenue employment between them'.
I wonder if anyone can offer advise or references regarding a problem my other half has had today. She usually parks on the street near Manchester University as she works just behind there. Today she got back to her car to find she'd got a parking ticket. She happened to spot a passing police car and asked them if she was parked illegally and they said no but also that it was a council matter.
The ticket was for parking for too long. Now, she says there was a sign some distance away on the other side of the road suggesting a 2 hour limit but she couldn't find anything on the side of the road she'd parked on. She's going to check again tomorrow, but can anyone advise if there are any guidelines as to what reasonable signage is? I recall seeing something somewhere that hinted signs have to be clear and fairly near the location in question but I can't find anything when searching both the forum and google.
We are mainly trying to work out if she has reasonable grounds for an appeal. She's been parking there for about a fortnight and this is the first time she's got a ticket but that also means she has parked there for that time without seeing any signs that indicate she shouldn't be.
TIA! Read more
Follow-up: Ticket just says 12:13 so I'm pretty sure the council will put it down as a transcription error.
She's decided challening then will be too much work and trouble so has paid. Thanks for all the advice.
I would like ti fit on of these kits onto my 54 Golf. They are selling quite a few on ebay but want peoples opinion's on these kits before i buy one. Has anyone on here brought one? They easy to install? Read more
It's not just the aiming of the light that dazzles but also the source.Scorpio,Puma and other projector lights coming towards me would leave two dark spots on the retinas of my eyes for several seconds as do the sources of HID.
What with the return of the 4x4 bashers, and news of the vote to ban smoking in public places, I have become rather taken with the idea that there are quite a lot of things that could usefully be banned, or at least limited by penal taxation to those who are rich enough (and therefore sensible and responsible enough, obviously) to have them.
In the arena of motoring, there's far too much unnecessary choice available, the exercise of which is introducing gratuitous risk into our lives and/or is a criminal waste of resources.
The question is not so much where to start, as where to stop.
I can't for the life of me find any justification on a public road for any car with a power to weight ratio greater than about 100bhp/tonne.
Neither can I see the justification for a car weighing more than about 300kg per passenger seat. This would unfortunately bring about the demise of the 'sports' car, but what legitimate purposes are they for anyway? It's a waste of scarce resources to build a car weighing 1000kg with 2 seats - if that's all you need, get a Smart.
Moving on from hardware, it has come to my attention that some people actually drive when they don't need to - even, sometimes, for fun! Clearly this is introducing needless risk not just for the drivers and their passengers, but also for the rest us who could be mown down by these feckless idiots at any time. What if they were to leave the road while having 'fun', and crash through the wall of an orphanage? Granted, it will be a challenge to come up with a system that ensures all journeys are fully justified, but I'm sure that our masters, with the help of a PFI inititaive and a £40bn computer system linked to Galileo, can solve that one.
Unfortunately, I have to go out this evening so I'll have to suspend the preliminary brainstorming myself, but no doubt other forum members could come up with some ideas - it would be a shame if we didn't all have an opportunity to become more valuable human beings by having at least one of our weaknesses proscribed or taxed to oblivion.
Over to you! Read more
CARAVANS !
Or at least some form of road fund taxation and MOT and insurance plus of course a charge similar to council tax !
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DieselBoy, saw you started this thread.
See my answer to your thread a while ago about the Duesenberg you sat in. We own it now.
Claire