p11 today's Telegraph

Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership now using facial recognition software to identify drivers who try to deny it was them at the wheel..........

apparently a company specialising in image enhancement is used to improve the speed photo and it is compared to your driving licence photo.......any doubts and all the pictures are taken to court.

one side of me says 'fair enough, if you speed, then lie and Attempt to Pervert the Course of Justice then you deserve it...but...

the other side says 'yet more creeping big brother stuff and loss of civil liberties' Read more

..............doors

I read at the weekend that if you accidentally lock you keys with the fob in your car you should try phoning someone via mobile phones and get them to press the key fob near to the phone that they are holding. It will then transmit and unlock the car.

Is this a windup??????????? Read more

I recently fitted genuine Ford replacement wiper blades front and rear to my 03/03 Focus. They're superior to the previous Bosch Super Plus in all respects and only cost a mere 17p more for the set of three than Halfords' price for Bosch. Also they incorporate a wear indicator, although how that works I don't know. From now on I will stick to the genuine article.
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L\'escargot. Read more

If you are buying a new car, I remember people used to quote an annual mileage figure of about 15,000 needed before it made economic sense, taking into account the extra cost, and extra servicing.

If one were to be buying a 3 or 4 year old car, spending eg.£ 6-7000 , does anyone know if the "payback" mileage is the sae, or is it less or more, given that the car is cheaper to buy , but then again, the steepest portion of the depreciation curve is over.......

Petrol is also much more expensive now too (but also diesel seems to not being discounted as much as petrol)

Then again the 3yr old diesel car will probably hold its value better than the petrol one - would the chepaer purchase price of the equivalent age petrol car be a big factor in this calculation ?

Does anyone have nay clues as to what the mileage payback would be ? Or at this price range is it worth anyone going to diesel ?


I don't do a huge mileage, but am debating wether to buy a much older bigger petrol engined car, eg. (P) plate Subaru legacy , or to buy a 3 yr old modern diesel, woith hopefully equivalent performance, but which of course will be more expensive to purchase, but cheaper in fuel... eg 2003 current shape Avensis...

What are the swings & roundabouts debates :-)

Read more

Driving home on the M8 swimming pool tonight, I quickly realised that the safest lane to be in was the middle lane! The outside lane had a lot of surface water and the drains obviously just were not coping with the rain.

In fact, was deluged when a lorry went down the outside lane (illegally I think?) and this acted like a snow plough throwing the water up on to the middle lane and the outside lane of the opposite carriageway.

The inside lane had its two "tracks" of worn out surface from the HGVS covered in surface water thus making driving very difficult.

So the middle lane it was! And, yes, of course, there were still cars travelling along with either no lights, or just sidelights on!

I suppose, logically speaking , there will very rarely be drainers in the middle lane so therefore it will have a suitable camber to remove the water from it as efficiently as possible whereas the other lanes will have drainers and the water will often flood at those points first if drains are blocked etc? Read more