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Motor Schools Association of Great Britain; driver training and testing
Motor Schools Association of Great Britain; driver training and testing
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For all the latest news, see www.msagb.com<br />
ULEZ charges are starting to spread<br />
John Lomas<br />
Editor, MSA GB North West<br />
ULEZs<br />
I see London has expanded its Ultra Low<br />
Emission Zone (ULEZ) to include virtually<br />
all of Greater London. The news got me<br />
thinking about ULEZs in general.<br />
Obviously all the instructors who<br />
already operate inside this one will have<br />
done their best to get a car which avoids<br />
the charges,or keeps the penalties as low<br />
as possible, but what about instructors<br />
living and working just outside the new<br />
ULEZ for whom it may now be a factor?<br />
I did a quick ‘find your nearest’ check<br />
using a postcode in the centre of Epsom<br />
in Surrey as my address. The three<br />
nearest DTCs are all inside the expanded<br />
boundary for Greater Londons ULEZ. Are<br />
the pupils in Surrey going to be prepared<br />
to pay for the extra costs that some of<br />
those Surrey instructors will now incur if<br />
they drive older (more polluting) cars?<br />
Could this new ULEZ influence ADIs to<br />
steer clear of some DTCs inside it?<br />
Are there other locations around<br />
Greater London which will have the<br />
same problem? That could be towns in<br />
Essex, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Bucks,<br />
Berkshire and Kent.<br />
Keyless entry<br />
I wonder how many of you are now<br />
driving and teaching in cars with keyless<br />
entry and driving fobs?<br />
Do you spend time showing your pupils<br />
that they do actually have a hidden key<br />
in the fob and the site of the hidden key<br />
hole, which generally in part of the<br />
driver’s door opener?<br />
At least, I should say that every keyless<br />
car I’ve driven has been so fitted.<br />
If you do have such a car, is your<br />
bonnet catch on the passenger side side<br />
wall next to the door, where it needs the<br />
the passenger door to be open in order to<br />
operate it – or the driver to be a<br />
contortionist?<br />
Well parked, mate<br />
No doubt, like me, you have often wondered how some people passed their tests<br />
when you watch them parking, and think ‘you could get a double decker or maybe a<br />
tank in that space.’ The good news is, not everyone is bad at parking. Feast your<br />
eyes on this lovely bit of ‘ambulance’ parking in Devon. Smack between the lines!<br />
The reason I ask is because my<br />
son-in-law recently had an absolutely<br />
dead battery on his car.<br />
The hidden key opened the driver’s<br />
door but it didn’t release the passenger<br />
door. Not only that but the door handles<br />
on the inside of the vehicle wouldn’t<br />
open the near side door either.<br />
He couldn’t reach the handle to open<br />
the bonnet, which meant he couldn’t get<br />
at the battery in order to recharge it.<br />
So here is a little DIY tip: using a<br />
battery booster/charger he rigged up a<br />
power plug, the type that fits in what I<br />
still call a cigarette lighter socket, to<br />
receive power rather than deliver it, and<br />
providing you have one which is<br />
permanently live it is possible with that<br />
device to get enough power into the<br />
battery to operate the other door locks.<br />
It is actually possible to buy a solar<br />
trickle charge which works the same way<br />
so if you have one of those it should do<br />
the job providing the sun is shining.<br />
Frozen roads in the future<br />
Do you ever consider the process of<br />
keeping the roads running during winter<br />
weather? If you take, for instance, a three<br />
or four-lane motorway, we know that the<br />
authorities will have salted with a single<br />
lane spreader or sometimes using two<br />
spreaders with an offset.<br />
Subsequent vehicle usage starts to<br />
grind the grit/salt into any snow or sleet<br />
to keep them clear, but the outer lanes<br />
often stay blocked. Fewer drivers venture<br />
into them because they are wary of using<br />
their normal speeds, but also because<br />
often deposited snow creeps from the<br />
central barriers towards the left, pushed<br />
by eddies set up be the barrier itself.<br />
This process gradually moves across<br />
the multiple lanes until eventually you<br />
may only have one open lane.<br />
Part of strategy for keeping the roads<br />
open assumes the passage over the cold<br />
road surface of vehicles running with<br />
HOT exhausts, which thaws the snow<br />
and ice. So my question is this: How<br />
much quicker will roads freeze and/or<br />
close when the vast majority of the<br />
vehicles passing over them are electric,<br />
and therefore not producing heat from an<br />
exhaust?<br />
CONTACT<br />
To comment on this article, or provide<br />
updates, contact John at<br />
johnstardriving@hotmail.com<br />
NEWSLINK n MARCH 2023 39
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