Topgear News

11 April 2007

National Car Rental and Guy Salmon are applying a UK wide smoking ban to all their vehicles. This is being implemented across the company’s 45,000 strong fleet ahead of the smoking bans coming into force in Wales, Northern Ireland and England this Spring and Summer.

“We feel very strongly that a smoking ban should be applied to all our vehicles to help our customers who are employers comply with the new legislation”, confirmed Ron Santiago, Vice President UK Operations. “By putting No Smoking stickers in all our vehicles we can ensure that they are not at risk from the heavy penalties for non-compliance with the new legislation.”

The Car Party has been interviewed at length on the Road Pricing and Road Charging Policies put forward by all othe political parties in the UK.

The Car Party will appear on the Tonight with Trevor McDonald Programme, on the 16th February 2007 at 8PM. The Car Party hope to attract 10000 new members over the coming month. Road Pricing will affect every member of society, non-drivers will still pay the road charging fee as companies pass on the charges to customers. All UK businesses will be affected! The economy will be damaged by this race by politicians of the Labour Party to raise revenue to fund thier illegal and ill founded war in Iraq. Gordon Brown does not drive has never learnt and does not intend to find out what the majority of the people he purports to represent have to cope with every day.

A FREE environmental health check for petrol cars has been launched this month.

targetneutral, the UK’s first mainstream scheme to “neutralise” CO2 emissions caused by driving, has teamed up with automotive experts Kwik-Fit to create the environmental ‘car surgeries’ – a first in Britain.

targetneutral is a voluntary, non-profit making partnership initiative from BP.

As well as offering the opportunity for petrol motorists to offset CO2 emissions from their cars, the targetneutral scheme encourages drivers to follow the Reduce, Replace, Neutralise philosophy.

New car registrations in Britain rose 5.2 percent in January compared with a year ago, the biggest rise in more than a year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said on Tuesday.

SMMT said it was also the first increase in three months and brought total new car registrations to 165,603 units in the month.

However, it said the strong annual gain was flattered by weak sales in January 2006.

Tuesday’s data showed private car registrations rose 1.2 percent year-on-year, the first increase since last March and the strongest rise since March 2004.

Fleet car registrations were 8.8 percent up on the year.

Just a few days in and 2007 is already shaping up to be the year when the principle of “polluter pays” finally becomes a reality for many UK manufacturers.

Alongside the obligatory fireworks and never-to-be-kept resolutions this New Year saw the launch of two new regulations that will force manufacturers of both electrical equipment and vehicles to pay for the safe disposal of their products.

The Waste Electrical and Electronic (WEEE) directive finally made it onto the statute book yesterday, ensuring that free take back services will have to be offered to all purchasers of electrical products such as computers, printers, TVs and white goods by July this year.

From January 1st 2007 motor manufacturers are responsible for disposing of their own brands when car owners decide to scrap them.

This will involve manufacturers nominating a specific service provider to take their customers’ old vehicles free of charge, to comply with the End of Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive.

However, drivers will still have the option of taking their car to a nearby independent authorised treatment facility – and may even be paid to do so.

The ELV Directive prescribes the issuing of a Certificate of Destruction (CoD) when a vehicle is delivered by its last owner to an Authorised Treatment Facility (ATF) to be recycled.

According to This Is Money, motorists could be hit by increasing costs as one of the UK’s biggest car insurer looks set to raise its premiums by 20% in 2007.
Insurance giant Royal Bank of Scotland Insurance, which owns brands such as Direct Line, Churchill and Privilege, has admitted that it is starting to increase premiums, following an earlier move by Norwich Union, which increased rates by 40%.

AdvertisementThe increases are claimed to be in response to the growing costs of personal injury claims, taking into account associated medical bills, compensation and legal fees. In addition, the insurance industry is also suffering from the rising problem of accidents caused by drivers without insurance.