Thank goodness for that I say because the Government tells us that in 2010-11 44% of vehicles failed their MOT test initially and 28% of vehicles had one or more car defects that were either missed by MOT test centres or incorrectly assessed.

This matters massively because the MOT is supposed to be a safety snapshot on the day and often it’s the only one older cars get each year.

VOSA (Vehicle and Operator Services Agency) data also showed that the roadworthiness of one-in-eight cars (12.4%) was being incorrectly assessed by MOT test centres.

Minister for Transport, Justine Greening said:
“Our garages are crucial to ensuring that Britain’s roads continue to be among the safest in the world. Most are doing good work but the latest data shows that there is room for improvement.”

“I want each motorist to be confident that a visit to the garage ends with their car repaired to a high standard by reputable mechanics rather than uncertainty about cost and the quality of service.”

“Giving drivers the very best information about garage performance is absolutely key to achieving this goal. It means that responsible garages will be well placed to reap the commercial benefits of transparency. Garages where performance is not up to scratch will find themselves under pressure to do more for their customers.”

Nicely said but drivers wouldn’t need performance information at all if all garages were regulated to perform to minimum and policed standards. As things stand, bad garages can pay to join good garage schemes, thus appearing to be responsible garages, without employing qualified or accredited mechanics.

And from the female motorist’s point of view, especially one who prefers her Yellow Pages Directory to any online listing, how is she to know that a garage listed as ‘Good’ doesn’t employ qualified mechanics to fix her car? Undoubtedly she thinks it does.

One interesting footnote to today’s Press release about all this states ‘The garage sector is regulated in several ways. The sector has to comply with business laws and consumer protection legislation. The MOT scheme is regulated by VOSA, an agency of the Department for Transport.’

All well and good but sadly, in our experience, none of this stops motorists being overcharged, patronised or sold things they don’t want to buy.

So I shall be interested to see how the Government assesses ‘reputable’ mechanics when they aren’t qualified or accredited as fit to do the job before being allowed to tinker with our brakes, for example.

All in all, I’m pleased to see that there will be a spotlight on garages again but wouldn’t it be easier to have one regulation system for all garages? Not just the ones who choose to self-regulate themselves via Motor Codes because the majority of these are franchised dealerships who have been told to sign up by their manufacturers but who presumably operate to higher standards than the Motor Codes Service & Repair code in any case? Which doesn’t include MOT centres as it happens.

And how will the industry judge value for money here? The likes of moneysavingexpert website tells motorists to use local authority centres where they’ll pay full price but aren’t sold anything they don’t need. But motorists will head for the discount deals and garages that may or may not be part of a ‘reputable’ scheme.

All to avoid the inevitable which is surely a fully blown regulatory scheme that outs the bad garages for once and for all.

FOXY Steph

You can read about 2010/2011 VOSA compliance survey data here. .

Or check your car’s MOT status  and history here.

Government proposals to end annual MOTs would put at risk up to 50,000 jobs in the retail motor trade disproportionately hitting apprenticeships, young employees and independent businesses, according to new research by Pro-MOTe.

In their report, “An MOT system that works”, Pro-MOTe explains that:
* Almost 150,000 people are employed in the UK as a direct result of MOT testing with 105,000 jobs in 21,000 testing stations and a further 42,000 in tyre and parts businesses;
* The retail motor industry employs a higher proportion of skilled workers (38%) compared to the UK as a whole (11%), and a higher proportion of 17 to 24 year-olds with more than 14,000 apprenticeships starting in 2009/10;
* MOT-related activity within the retail motor trade is valued at £2.35 billion.  Replacing the current 3-1-1 MOT regime in which cars and vans are tested at three years and every year thereafter to a 4-2-2 system in place in most of the rest of the EU would reduce income from fees and repair work by £1.06 billion;
* A reduction of trade in such a labour-intensive industry would put between 25,000 and 40,000 MOT tester jobs at risk with a further 8,000 jobs in related activity vulnerable too.

The Pro-MOTe report follows its earlier studies that found that reducing MOT frequency would risk causing up to 250 more deaths every year on UK roads and would cost the motorist an additional £57 a year.  Recent opinion polls have shown that the proposed changes are not supported by drivers themselves.

We are told that the Government will announce its decision tomorrow. One last attempt to influence them then…

How can they opt for anything other than the status quo with jobs and lives on the agenda? But why has it taken them SO LONG to say so, causing so many people unnecessary stress in the industry and the time it takes us all to canvass for common-sense. We don’t need the EU to tell us how to run the UK motor industry; we’re different from France and Germany, for example, and we know best for UK motorists in this instance.

FOXY Steph

Her experience echoes that of other members who are baffled when an insurer pays out in what is typically a no fault accident situation. And who worry that their premium or No Claims Bonus might be affected.

What seems to be happening is that whenever there is a liability dispute (which, let’s face it, insurers encourage by telling motorists not to admit liability even when it’s clearly their fault) both insurers are accepting shared costs (called a ‘knock for knock’ basis) rather than taking this further to identify the guilty or fraudulent party.

Simply because it is often cheaper to pay out on this basis than argue the toss…

This is what Elizabeth tells us about her experiences. Her comments about dealing with uswitch remind me why it can make sense to shop in advance and double check a comparison website later I you aren’t happy as obviously deals can change…

“I have recently renewed my car insurance. I tried uSwitch about 2 ½ weeks before renewal and did not much like the premiums. I tried again 2 weeks later and the premiums were 250 pounds cheaper! I chose a company, which I knew was affiliated with my existing one, but it turned out that they are the same company. So I have ended up with the same company, but at the price I found on uSwitch.”

“By the way, I have chosen a high excess because I have found that if you have an accident with a lower excess, it gets added to your premium anyway. The financial penalty for claiming for small amounts is larger than the claim.”

“I had an incident nearly 2 years ago when someone claimed I had hit her car and caused damage. I was not aware of anything and there is no way that my car could have caused that particular damage. She harassed me to the point where I had to go to my local police station. They got her to stop. In the end my insurance company (not the current one) settled in error, having received no proof at all from her. I reported this incident to my current insurer last year, but now it seems to have disappeared from their records.”

“I have had numerous instances where damage has been caused to my car when I have not been there – and of course no one has owned up.”

FOXY’s advice is always to tell the insurance company the full facts and if you know nothing about any accident or you deny any liability ask them to confirm that they have recorded this as a no fault accident. In these circumstances it would seem unreasonable for the insurer to inflate your premium or downgrade your No Claims Bonus as a result.

And whilst the ‘knock for knock’ settlement system seems lazy and unscientific ie  ‘we’re not sure who’s guilty so let’s split it’ we do appreciate that the time this takes to sort out can be more costly than a 50:50 formula.

If any motorist feels her insurance premium has been inflated by a previous accident that was not their fault they should check whether that accident has been scored against them on their policy. If the insurer is unwilling to review this as a no fault accident and perhaps your no claims bonus has been affected, please let us know the details. And shop around for  a better renewal deal.

I should add that this is going to be doubly hard to police in the lead up to insurers imposing gender equality ratings from December 2012 onwards. This is when insurers will be allowed to charge ALL women drivers more than they have been paying despite the statistically safer driving record of young women drivers compared to young male drivers in particular.

There is nothing fair about this ‘equality ruling’ when it comes to common rating genders for car insurance premiums…

FOXY Steph

NB: FOXY Lady Drivers Club includes a female friendly accident assistance service to help members and their family after an accident. Providing you contact them before your insurer, they can advise you of your best option in the circumstances. If you don’t claim against/via your insurer but get our service to claim from the liable third party there can be no doubt of this claim adversely affecting your premium in future.

But before I put this to the back of my memory, please bear with me whilst I remind myself about the misery of this and how other female motorists are likely to feel in similar situations.

Even though I run a motoring association for women, I certainly wasn’t prepared, mentally or emotionally, for the trauma of a car accident and painful injuries as a result.

But there was no avoiding the impact when a lady driver pulled out immediately in front of us when we were driving at c40 mph along an A road. What was she thinking of at the time I wonder? Certainly not her personal safety.

So these are some of the lessons I have learned from all this…

1    That what seems to be a no fault car accident isn’t always how the third party tells the story. In fact the other female driver contested liability saying that we were indicating left at the junction she was waiting to turn right from…

2    That some motor insurance companies will postpone a no fault claim resolution even when it’s obvious that it’s ‘their’ motorist that was at fault.

3    That some motorists presumably think that it’s a valid excuse to pull out in front of a fast moving car if it had an indicator flashing (which ours didn’t but even if it had, you can’t trust indicator lights that might have been left on in error…).

4    To have the contact details for a friendly support service like FOXY’s accident assistance service, especially when the accident is clearly not your fault, to get you mobile as soon as possible. We were on holiday in the UK so we didn’t know any garages and we didn’t have friends or family to call on for help. It was obvious the car was going to be a write off and even if it had been repairable we needed wheels to get us home and to carry on. As it happened, a small replacement car was delivered to our hotel before 9am the next morning. Couldn’t have been slicker.

5    To check out all aches and pains at the hospital at the time. I broke my thumb and cracked my sternum which was bad enough so I had to go to the hospital anyway but my husband claimed to be fine at the time. Some seven weeks later after limping for most of this time his Doctor tells him he has ligament damage to the upper part of his brake pedal foot. Not surprising because he was driving at the time and hit the brake pedal hard as you would expect but perhaps if he hadn’t been so brave (or shocked perhaps) he might have got some practical advice about pain relief from hospital staff who probably see these sort of commonplace road accident injuries on a daily basis.

6    How to shower/wash hair/wrap Xmas presents and get dressed with one hand… You might tick of the job but it takes forever, is painful and the end result always looks second rate…

7    How lucky I am to have such a multi-talented husband. I hadn’t realised what a good cook, washer up and ironer he was and I look forward to sharing these chores with him in future .

8    Oh how much I have missed the independence of my own car and being able to drive it but thank you to all my friends who have ferried me around and done little things for me that mean so much…

9    And even when you think the pain has passed (I needed an operation to pin the thumb in place which then needed removing, ouch) and that painkillers are a thing of the past, you still need to take Ibuprofen regularly to reduce the swelling under the plaster which can be so uncomfortable and tight at night it can even wake you up…

10    Just how traumatic the whole episode has been for me and others in similar situations. I won’t forget and I will be forever sympathetic to those in similar situations. Just imagine how awful it would be to be involved in an accident when someone is killed or seriously injured.

Finally, after such a miserable time I now want to get on with the rest of my life.

The first thing we’re going to do is go car shopping for a more sedate BMW this weekend.

Then I can really get motoring in more ways than one… I have so much life and FOXY business to catch up with now.

FOXY Steph

During National Eye Health Week in June 2011 Meg secured a Parliamentary Debate on driver eyesight testing. Despite this success Meg was disappointed with the response as the Minister defended current arrangements, although the debate helped to raise awareness of the issue among MPs.

Meg has also asked Road Safety Minster Mike Penning several questions in Parliament. In September Meg asked if he would conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the replacement of the number-plate test with a comprehensive eye test by a qualified practitioner when taking their driving test and at 10 year intervals. The Minister responded by stating that the government has no plans to do so.

Meg believes that the cost of implementing regular, comprehensive eyesight tests would be minimal whereas the benefits would be great, providing reassurance that drivers meet minimum standards to drive safely and helping prevent crashes and casualties, which are devastating to families and a huge cost burden on emergency services and the NHS.

During Road Safety Week 2011, coordinated by Brake, Meg was involved in a media campaign urging drivers to consider whether their eyesight would meet the minimum requirements. This included an interview on BBC Radio Sheffield with coverage in the Sheffield Star and Sheffield Telegraph.

Meg intends to continue to lobby the government until she is happy that appropriate action is taken to ensure all drivers have the required standard of eyesight for driving on UK roads.

This is her advice for all motorists…

* Get your eyes tested at least every two years, even if you think your eyesight is perfect. Your eyesight can deteriorate without you noticing.
* If you notice deterioration, get tested straight away.
* This applies to all ages, but is especially important if you are over 50, when eyesight is more likely to deteriorate
* If you are taking medication or suffer from any medical conditions, check with your doctor or optometrist if it could affect your driving or vision.

If you need glasses or contact lenses:
* Never drive without them, and keep them clean. Keep a spare pair in your vehicle if you are prone to forget.
* Choose glasses with thin or no rims, which give you a greater field of vision.
* Choose glasses with anti-reflective coating, which can help reduce glare at night.
* If you wear glasses, keep a pair of prescription sunglasses in your vehicle.
* Avoid wearing tinted glasses at night-time or during bad weather.

FOXY Steph

This time it was my friend’s turn to drive us in her VW Polo and during the journey I noticed she had a dashboard warning light on needing attention. ‘I’ve been to the garage about it’ she said ‘and apparently it’s nothing to worry about.’

Well it would be if it was my car. I’d want it switched off for starters and the fact that a garage couldn’t do that suggests it hasn’t got the latest diagnostic equipment so how would they know for sure there’s nothing wrong?

And certain malfunctioning dashboard lights are now a reason for failing a car at MOT time.

So either way my advice is to get any potentially dangerous light looked at and switched off. Otherwise you might be risking something nasty, causing your engine serious problems and if your MOT is imminent I think you might need it sorted before then…

These are the lights that will be checked to make sure they are working properly, where fitted, in MOT tests this year.

• Electronic parking brake
• Electronic stability control warning lights (where fitted)
• Headlight main beam warning light
• Electronic power steering warning light
• Brake fluid level warning light
• Tyre pressure monitoring system warning light
• Air bag warning light
• Seat belt pre-tensioner warning light

It’s all a bit worrying because electrics can be tricky and expensive, especially for older cars.

Tell us if you have any experience to add to this please…

FOXY Steph

How she must dislike her own gender despite our safer driving records.

As such she has surely opened the door to potential claims of ageism and sexism in the face of statistical evidence that most young women are safer drivers than many young men who are known to cause the majority of the UK’s fatal, serious and very expensive road accidents.

But why has she done this?

Q    Will this ruling save young lives?
A    No. It might even encourage more young men to drive than before because of cheaper car insurance for them.

Q    If this was your insurance business would you charge cautious and feckless drivers the same premiums for the same cover?
A    Of course not.

Q    Who will benefit most from this?
A    Young men and motor insurers because female premiums will rise a lot and male premiums will fall a bit, leaving more profit in between.

Q    Who is footing this bill to include the cost of so many road accidents caused by men?
A    Female motorists.

Call it equality if you like but it isn’t fair on UK women drivers.

Expect to hear more from me about this throughout 2012 as car insurance premiums for women drivers start to rise…

What do you think?

FOXY Steph

Ford Fiesta
Ford Focus
Vauxhall Corsa
VW Golf
Vauxhall Astra
Vauxhall Insignia
VW Polo
BMW 3 series
Nissan’s Qashqai
Mini

The cars are smaller, cheaper and greener than they used to be.

Cost is clearly an influencer and fleet cars are smaller eg BMW 3 series and the Golf, other than the Insignia.

In terms of new car sales in general Ford, Vauxhall, VAG, BMW and Nissan have done well in 2011. Of the big brands, Toyota, Honda, Fiat, Mazda and Renault haven’t.

There are very few cars in this list that aren’t popular with women drivers so I’m pleased to see that our influence and preferences are being felt in the fleet as well as the personal car market.

FOXY Steph

The more complicated in car entertainment gets, the less I use it. Yes I rely on TomTom to get me from A to B and I can also claim to have Bluetooth in my car via a radio device… but I haven’t got the hang of that yet and maybe I never will.

Is it just me that wonders if I REALLY need my car to do more than my smartphone can already? Or that all this acts as a distraction to drivers?

In a recent survey by KPMG about future trends, more than a third (37%) of the 200 car executives sampled believe “infotainment” in cars is nearly as important as car safety. Sounds like a male-dominated sample to me?

In this context ‘infotainment’ seems to mean speech recognition and internet connections using wi-fi and 3G, whatever the outcome of all this might produce. Yet surely too much ‘infotainment’ is bad for car safety when we should be concentrating on our driving?

We are told that car manufacturers will soon be joining forces with music, telecoms and IT companies to provide in-car gadgets working with the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft and LG, among others.

John Leech from KPMG says some car manufacturers are already making the sort of “connected” cars the survey is referring to.

“The recent collaboration between Toyota and Intel was announced at the end of last year with Intel claiming that the connected car is the third-fastest growing technological device, following smartphones and tablets.”

Apparently Audi has developed built-in 3G wireless in its A7 and will extend this to other new models. What do you need this for guys? That you can’t do otherwise…

Good to hear that hybrid cars will be getting a lot of investment over the next five years according to 53% of the car executives surveyed; let’s hope this makes for more competition here, lower purchase prices and better fuel economies.

And good to know that the majority (61%) also believe that there is much scope for developments in normal petrol and diesel engines so consumers benefit from greater efficiency and CO2 reduction. That sounds like me and a more familiar status quo world…

Speaking personally I’d like my business car to be a haven for thought in between meetings rather than an office in its own right.

But enough about me, what do you use yours for?

Heather Peters has taken her fight to the small claims court in laid back Los Angeles because experts think she has a better chance of winning her case in a court with more relaxed standards and could get a payout many times higher than she’d get otherwise.

If others follow her lead, she estimates Honda could be forced to pay as much as $2bn (£1.3bn) in damages estimated as 200,000 cars and drivers each negotiating $10,000.

And then there’d be all the other manufacturers cars that fail to perform as well as promised…

Heather is a state employee and ex-lawyer who seems to have a grievance here, whether it’s legitimate or not is another matter. She argues that the Japanese manufacturer knew her 2006 Civic Hybrid would not achieve the 50mpg as advertised. As the vehicle’s battery deteriorated over time, it barely achieved 30mpg, she said. Had she known this she’d never have bought the car apparently.

“The sales people said 50 miles per gallon, but they didn’t say if you run your air conditioning and you remain in stop-and-go traffic, you’re going to get 29 to 30 miles per gallon” she said. “If they did, I would have gotten [sic] the regular Civic.”

On their part, Honda said that Heather had never contacted the company to complain or express any concern about her vehicle’s fuel economy until she sent a letter in late November and then filed her suit shortly afterwards.

“Once the suit was filed, Honda immediately offered to inspect her vehicle and work with her on the findings, but those offers were rejected,” the company said in a statement.

The company also said it did not believe Heather was deceived.

“The window sticker that was attached to her vehicle (as required by federal law) clearly indicated that her mileage would vary depending on driving conditions, options, vehicle condition and other factors,” the statement said.

It’ll be interesting to see the court’s definition of ‘reasonable’ in terms of the variation between the 50mpg suggested and the 30mph obtained. That and bearing in mind the allegation that Heather hadn’t contacted Honda before last November.

Watch this space; especially other disgruntled car buyers who feel the same as Heather.

FOXY Steph