News Archives - Driving

Bad Parking Awards 2021 – entries now open

The explosive rise in online shopping over lockdown has flooded our streets with delivery vans. Nothing wrong with that you might think. After all, home deliveries are convenient for many and replace a large number of car shopping trips with a smaller number undertaken by professional drivers. However, many aren’t entirely professional. In fact, in many cases they’re downright dangerous.…

Hydrogen-powered homes to demo greener alternative to natural gas

The natural gas we use to cook and heat our homes is responsible for over 30 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions so in an attempt to reduce that impact on the environment, two show homes where all the appliances are powered entirely by hydrogen are being built in Gateshead. As part of the government’s drive to phase out…

Driving tips for winter conditions

Turning the ignition key first thing on a damp December morning was once a gamble, with little guarantee the car would stir itself into life. Thankfully, cars today are more than capable of dealing with the British winter and a few simple precautions can help avoid an unnecessary breakdown. Antifreeze During the winter you use more windscreen wiper fluid so…

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger – we need smaller, lighter cars now

When the German-British statistician and economist Ernst Schumacher  said “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction“, he was making the case for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies. It’s a shame car makers did not take note. Bigger…

If driverless cars seem too good to be true, perhaps they are

Driverless car evangelists rarely acknowledge the transport Elysium they predict is possible now – and with today’s technology. After all, what the world needs is fewer cars, not fewer drivers. We’re losing count of all the benefits being promised of driverless cars. Motorists are being teased with visions of driverless cars as luxurious and relaxing private retreats clever enough to…