Farnz

A question for the people saying undertaking is illegal under all circumstances; would you explain what I should have done in the following situation to avoid undertaking while still driving safely: I was driving in the left hand lane of the M40 at 70 mph; there was a HGV behind me, slowly falling behind. A car overtaking in the lane immediately to my right is travelling at speeds well in excess of 80 mph (I would guess speed of around 100 mph). As we approach a bridge up ahead, the car overtaking passes me, and gets to around 2 car lengths in front of me before spotting the marked police van on the bridge and braking heavily, to the point where their vehicle's automatic hazard warning lights on emergency braking come on. I made the judgement call that with the other vehicle braking hard but staying in lane, and a potentially fully loaded HGV behind me, I was safer continuing at 70 mph indicated speed and undertaking them quickly (I was past in under a second) than I would have been braking to avoid the undertake manoeuvre. I did not have the space available at the time the car started braking to safely move out two lanes and overtake them, and further felt that doing so would increase the risk that I collided with the car that was braking heavily. FWIW, the police ignored me; I did not see the overtaking car again on my journey, so I do not know whether they slowed down to a safe and legal speed, or if the police chose to arrest them for their low standard of driving.

A slight clarification on the last point with fuel-injected cars - for maximum fuel economy keep the car in gear at above idle revs when slowing with the brakes. A fuel injection system only injects fuel if needed to avoid the engine stalling or if requested by the driver's use of the accelerator pedal. If you're in gear, at 1,600 rpm and slowing gently, no fuel is used at all.

You might want to browse the results at http://www.spritmonitor.de/en/overview/45-Skoda/400-Superb.html?fueltype=2&vehicletype=1&power_s=150&power_e=170&gearing=4&sort=1&powerunit=2 - they cover multiple cars like the one you've ordered. Bear in mind that most of them are in Europe, so will call the Estate a "Combi" instead. They're showing 27 to 40 MPG (UK), across a variety of drivers. The car's warning light for low fuel comes on at around 10 to 15 litres left in the tank (assuming it's the same as my diesel estate); the tank itself is a 60 litre tank, so assuming you don't try to drive on fumes, expect to put in 40 to 50 litres each fill up, for a cost (at current prices) of around £50-£80 each fill-up.

My 170 DSG estate is at its most efficient if I keep to about 50 mph - there's a noticeable drop in economy between 60 mph and 70 mph sustained, and another noticeable drop from 70 mph to 80 mph.

I suspect part of the cause of this particular problem is that we've basically given up on low-level enforcement of motoring law - if it's not a strict liability offence caught on camera (such as speeding, or red light jumping), or so obviously dangerous that the police will not struggle to get a conviction, you are very unlikely to even be pulled over for a quiet word, let alone acquire points on your licence or a fine. There's thus no incentive to keep up to date - the rational thing to do is to remember the few offences for which you will get in trouble (speeding past a camera or mobile unit, red light jumping), and to not drive in an out-and-out dangerous fashion. Beyond that, little mistakes like treating STOP signs as give way signs will be tolerated, in the name of "not persecuting the motorist". And, as a nasty side effect, because the sillier motoring laws are not thoroughly enforced (e.g. 70 limit on motorways), there's very little political pressure to fix the law. We just ignore it, and rely on limited enforcement to work around the issues. We would be far better off as motorists with strict enforcement but with reguarly updated laws than we are with weak enforcement and laws that are out of date or largely ignored.

I wouldn't expect the fixed cameras to be any more sympathetic - although a real live officer might be (you'd want a policeman to comment to confirm that). Speeding's a strict liability offence; the fact that you're exceeding the posted limit is enough to prosecute, and you don't need to be knowingly speeding, as long as the signage was up to standard. The theory goes that if you haven't seen the signs, you weren't paying attention to the road around you, and who knows what else you'd have missed? The only exception is when the signage is not up to the required legal standard, where it's up to the prosecution to then show that you should have known that you were speeding - in that one rare case, the fact that you were using the speed limit database in your satnav to assist you in keeping your speed down would help. http://www.abd.org.uk/speed_limit_signs.htm has a reasonable summary of the rules on signage - they also reference the appropriate legislation, so you can head on over to http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ and look at what the law actually says if you're interested.

Have you a reference for these new rules? The only things I've seen are proposals for a visual inspection of emissions control equipment (which includes the DPF), making an empty DPF can enough to pass the MOT. And, as I said, yes, your emissions will increase when you remove the DPF, but the new limits are already in place; it's not the full Euro IV or Euro V limits, it's the old fast pass criteria. The change is that you must pass on the fast pass criteria (no more than 1.5ppm on the first measurement), rather than being permitted to take the mean of three consecutive measurements, out of 6 maximum permitted measurements (although the level is still 1.5 ppm for modern cars, rather than the 3.0 ppm older turbodiesels are allowed). For reference, a well-maintained Euro II diesel engine can pass on the fast pass criteria (my wife's car has done so repeatedly). I would be shocked to discover that engine management has deteriorated so badly in the last few years that a modern Euro IV or V engine (which has to meet much tighter smoke per kilometre limits than the Euro II did) is unable to manage a fast pass without a DPF.

You can get the official MOT manuals from http://www.dft.gov.uk/vosa/publications/manualsandguides/vehicletestingmanualsandguides.htm as a free download. There's no current requirement to check for a DPF, and it looks like any future requirement will be a simple visual inspection - so you can meet it by having an empty DPF can fitted to replace your DPF. Note, however, that modern cars must pass the smoke check on the fast pass criteria - this means no visible smoke once the engine has settled at test revs, not enough smoke emitted to (in the tester's opinion) obscure the vision of other road users, and first smoke reading must be less than 1.5 ppm. A modern diesel should meet this without difficulty - as long as it's properly maintained.

Micro SD cards should be fine with an adaptor - they're electrically identical to their bigger sized brothers, and any decent adaptor (mine for my Columbus unit is a TDK branded one that came with the micro SDHC card I use) holds the micro SD firmly in place so that there are no mechanical differences, either.

I had my fogs on for about 10 minutes of my commute this morning - visibility went down to about 40 metres as I went through a dip at the top of a hill, so fogs went on and I slowed to a bit under 30 mph to give me reaction room if something suddenly loomed out of the white. Rears had to go off when someone caught up with me, but that's par for the course when you're not driving fast. The number of people who had their rear fogs on for the remaining 15 miles of the drive was a bit weird, though - I kept my normal headlights on, but it's disconcerting when the car in front slows, and you don't immediately spot the side brake lights going on (takes a moment or two to realise the fogs have become larger), and inevitably, many of the cars using rear fogs in the clear stretch had their centre brake light out.

You definitely need to test drive the DSG before ruling it out - because it's a dual-clutch transmission, the driving feel is much closer to a manual gearbox than to a traditional torque-converter automatic; indeed, it is basically two manual gearboxes, and a robot that operates the clutches and gearshift levers. You do need Hill Hold Control with it, as you can't easily make it ride the clutch while you release the handbrake, but that's the only downside I've found. If you want the race driver feel available to you (for when you want a bit of fun in the car), add the flappy paddles; I've personally not bothered, as I'm happy to use the gearshift instead on the rare occasions where I want manual control of the gear choice, but that's my preferences only. Edited to add: Hill Hold Control makes the car keep the brakes on lightly as you get going on a slope, so that you don't roll backwards as the clutch engages and the engine starts to pull.

Be careful here - if DVLA send you the wrong licence in error (e.g. they noted no resit required, but the court ordered an extended retest), you are not supposed to use it beyond the rights you'd have if they sent you the right licence. If you're driving on a full licence issued in error, and the plod decide to give you a hard time, you're pretty much guaranteed to face charges of driving without a licence, and possibly fraud charges if they're really gunning for you (because you tried to trick them by claiming you had a full licence still). Safe thing to do is to contact the court that issued the ban, and get them to clear things up - keep records of contact with the court, so that if the result is that you keep your full licence without a retest, you can at least show that you tried to get it sorted like an honest driver. While the court is trying to clear it up, don't use the licence as anything other than a provisional; you're entitled to a provisional, and if you've got L-plates and a supervising driver (and stay off motorways), it's clear that you're trying hard to comply with what the court ordered, and thus should keep you safe from a second ban.

Find a way to fit a 3.3kW (based on 26.5kWh capacity, 8 hours to charge) diesel genset in the car, connected to the 230V single phase charge mechanism, and you've basically got that. Just be aware that even a silenced diesel generator is 65dB or so of noise - and that's a 500cc beast, not a little 50cc unit. Skoda's quoted figures (100 miles or so range, 26.5kWh battery capacity) suggests 0.26kWh/mile. That's an average speed at 3.3kW of just 12 mph if you don't want to be discharging the battery faster than you're discharging it. Looked at a different way - assuming you travel at 60mph, you're going to consume around 15.6kW sustained power. Your 3.3kW generator means that you're now only demanding 12.3kW from the battery - or a little bit over 2 hours to go from full charge to fully empty. This, in turn, pushes the range figure from around 100 miles, to around 120 miles, after which a three-phase charger needs two hours to give you another 120 miles range. Assuming, for the sake of argument only, that I'm a typical car user. My longest conceivable day's driving would be a day trip to the inlaws. Assume that they don't have the kit for electric car charging from 3 phase, so I have to charge up at home, and get back to charge again. I need around 300 miles range over 4 hours driving, 4 hours idle to be able to do that. In my 4 hours idle time at the inlaws, my battery would charge to half-full from a normal plug socket, so 50 miles of plain battery, getting me 150 miles total range on battery. I need my generator sized to give me 150 miles on a half charge, otherwise I can't get home. That means I need the generator to supply 2/3rd of the power; in this case, around 12kW to let me drive at 70 on the motorway. As an aside, this suggests that Skoda's range figure isn't completely unreasonable - my Superb, with the 170bhp diesel block, gets about 10 miles per litre. 1 litre of diesel is 10kWh of energy, and a common rail engine can be assumed to be around 33% efficient on typical driving. This suggests that I use about 0.33kWh/mile - only slightly more than Skoda are quoting for the electric Octavia.

I drive an 11 plate 170 DSG - you can see my fuelling records at Spritmonitor.de. Most of my driving is fast single carriageways - so the average is about what you'd expect for that. I did do some knocking about on urban roads in December - the fuellings on the 19th and 26th, where I got around 41 MPG, are both from predominantly urban driving, with a little bit of fast dual carriageway.

Just a note - Nokia handed rSAP over to the Bluetooth SIG in 2005. Since then, there has been no need to license rSAP separately, you just need to license Bluetooth.

So, in the event that you can safely overtake without difficulty, you would still expect the car in front of you to speed up to a speed that your car is safe at, but theirs is not, just because you cannot be bothered to overtake, even when there is no oncoming traffic and you can do so without risk? And if they don't accelerate to a speed at which they are dangerous, they share the blame for your refusal to overtake when you can do so safely? That's basically what you're claiming - in the situation I'm thinking of, I was able to overtake both cars safely in one manoeuvre in my ancient SEAT - the Skoda would have had no trouble. Remember, you don't know why the car ahead is going slowly; based on your claim that tractors are OK, even though they also go slowly, you appear to be assuming that they're doing so simply because they want to, when it might be for good reasons (e.g. gearbox problems stopping them going into high gears).

OK, so if I'm driving my ancient SEAT at 40 mph in an NSL in very wet conditions through some woodlands, because I know from past experience that that's the best I can safely do in that car without being unable to maintain control should a deer sprint across my path, you'd say I was driving reasonably? Even though a Yeti could safely do 60 mph in the same conditions, as you have much better braking on a modern Skoda than in an ancient SEAT? And you missed my point for the choosing not to overtake - the pusher is tailgating, regularly dropping into low gears (or possibly neutral - can't tell when you're the car behind) to rev loudly, and otherwise trying to "encourage" the slow car to go faster, even though (as proven by the fact that I could overtake both cars safely in one manoeuvre) they could choose to overtake instead. They're demonstrating by their driving that they are unhappy at 35 mph in a 60 limit, yet they are choosing not to overtake when it's safe to do so. Are you seriously suggesting that in such a case, the slow car is the danger?

At what point is the pushee blameless? Presumably, you wouldn't consider the pushee to blame if they were travelling at the NSL, but the driver behind was pushing because they wanted to speed? Would you also consider the pushee to blame if they were being pushed into speeding up by someone who could safely overtake, but was choosing not to?

Sure - it's just an example of how saying "you're dangerous because something about your driving causes other drivers to become frustrated" leads to ridiculous claims. I would hope that no-one would attempt to claim that anyone who drives a certain model of car is inherently dangerous. It would work just as well with "The presence of Skodas on the road causes some drivers of 'prestige' cars to get upset and drive badly - are you a bad driver because you drive a Skoda?"

A thought - having just noticed (yes, I'm slow on the uptake!) that you said this was first discussed on the Yeti forum. Some drivers get extremely frustrated because higher vehicles (like the Yeti) obstruct their view at junctions, whereas smaller vehicles (e.g. the Fabia) don't - you can see straight through the windows of a Fabia if you're in an Audi A8, but the Yeti's height means that you're looking at body panels instead. This is especially true when there are multiple lanes at a T-junction, going in different directions, and uneven traffic flow on the major road, where the Yeti can stop you seeing gaps that would otherwise be safe. Does this make Yeti drivers inherently dangerous compared to Fabia drivers? I would argue not - it's not the Yeti driver's fault that some people get frustrated at their safe and legal use of the public highway, and it's certainly not their fault if the frustrated driver does something dangerous that they wouldn't have done in the absence of the Yeti. Similarly, and by analogous reasoning, it's not the slow driver's fault that some people get frustrated at their safe and legal use of the public highway.

Your current policy is invalidated at the moment of cancellation. The police are notified, so that if you continue to drive, they know you're driving without insurance. And yes, you get the fun of having to declare that fact when you buy new insurance, with all the pain that entails.

It's all done on correlations - they're not actually interested in causation; hence them losing in the EU courts over the differential pricing for men and women (they were asked to prove that there were sex-linked differences that didn't go away when you controlled for factors like what sort of cars different people choose to drive, and couldn't). People who are involved in accidents are more likely to be involved in future accidents; some of the people caught in this drag net are perfectly safe drivers who could not have avoided the accident short of not driving - something like being rear-ended by an ambulance while you're waiting at a red light, because the ambulance driver immediately behind you got an emergency call, and hit the gas before they looked or turned on their blues and twos. Others are the type who do things like brake for the junction at the last minute (effectively doing an emergency stop for every junction), and get rear-ended by someone who hasn't noticed the junction ahead, and wasn't expecting you to brake that hard. Still the fault of the driver behind for not keeping a safe distance, but the driver in front is driving in a way that causes accidents - this time, it wasn't their fault, but later, they might find themselves skidding through the junction, as they misjudge the last minute, and this accident is their fault. Insurance doesn't (and probably can't) collect enough information to tell the two apart, thus penalising the first class of driver; they certainly can't ask you, because if you are the second type of driver, you will still claim to be the first type. Oh, and be careful with not telling your insurers; 90% of the time, they won't find out if neither side claims. The other 10%, they'll invalidate your insurance and pass your details to the police for prosecution, as you "failed to disclose a material fact".

Arguably, the situation is the same in both cases; in the one with two cars, the driver who wishes to go faster than the road conditions and/or legal limits permit has encountered an obstacle in front (a slower moving vehicle), and is refusing to slow to a safe speed or overtake safely. In the one with only one car, the driver simply hasn't encountered an obstacle that forces them to slow down. In both cases, it's the driver who wishes to go fast who's creating the hazard - if they slowed down, then overtook the slower driver when it was safe to do so, there wouldn't be a hazard in the two car case, while in the one car case, the only hazard is that they will be unable to control their car in the event of something unexpected.

Note that the PD engines were prone to DPF problems - they were designed without a DPF, and had one retrofitted to the design late in its life. Because of this, the DPF is badly placed on the PD engines; it's somewhere that doesn't stay hot during normal driving. CR engines are less prone to DPF problems, because the DPF is snuggled up close to the hot parts of the engine, keeping it nice and warm. In turn, this means that they're more likely to manage passive regens (which just need the DPF to get hot - no extra trickery required, so happens naturally when driving hard). Additionally, the CR engines are better able to manage active regens, as they're able to inject at any point in the cycle.

What fuel are you using in it? It may sound a bit daft, but part synthetic diesels (like Shell's V-Power) also produce less soot when burnt; a change of fuel might help a bit.