The BBC News website has a non-story about speeding statistics at the site of two switched-off speed cameras in Oxfordshire. Oxfordshire County Council couldn’t afford to keep the speed cameras going after the British government withdrew central funding for speed cameras in England so they turned them off but Thames Valley Safer Road Partnership – [...]

The Department for Transport issues guidelines on village speed limits for local authorities in England.  It defines a village as a settlement with a minimum of 20 properties with a frontage on a 600m length of road.  If it doesn’t meet those criteria it isn’t a village.  Their guidelines also say that speed checks should [...]

The clocks went back an hour this morning to mark the return to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Every year since 1916 – excluding the second world war years – the clocks have changed twice a year, bringing lighter mornings during the winter at a cost darker evenings. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents [...]

Nope, nothing to do with the Cha Cha Slide.  Samoa is changing which side of the road it drives on from the right to the left. The reason given by the Samoan government is that they’ll be able to import cheap cars from Japan which produces cheaper right hand drive cars for its domestic market [...]

Asda have dropped the price of their petrol and diesel to below a pound a litre, saying “There is no justification for any major retailer selling fuel above £1 per litre”. Good for Asda, there is indeed no excuse for selling fuel about £1 per litre.  Oil prices have risen slightly in the last month [...]

74% of residents in Edinburgh voted against a road pricing scheme. 79% of residents in Manchester voted against a road pricing scheme. 1.8m people signed a petition on the Prime Minister’s website calling on the British government to abandon plans for road pricing. The European Empire’s response? Ignore the referenda and press on with promoting [...]

The British government has announced that it is nationalising the East Coast railway franchise after National Express made a half year loss of £20m. Lord Adonis, the unelected Transport Minister for England, said that they wouldn’t renegotiate the London to Edinburgh franchise contract as National Express had asked because “I’m simply not prepared to bail [...]

I went for my daily walk from the office to the shopping centre in town today and as I was walking over a bridge over the railway I smelled smoke, looked over the side and saw that there was a fire under the bridge somewhere near the tracks. The two people in front of me [...]

The British government is seriously considering dropping the national speed limit from 60mph to 50mph. There will be an option for local authorities to increase the speed limit on major roads back to 60mph if they can give a good enough reason to do so.  Although, as the highways departments of most local authorities seem [...]

I don’t know if any of you have ever been to Telford but it has approximately 300 traffic islands per head of population.  Yet despite this dubious accolade, virtually nobody in the town knows how to drive round one. I admit that some of the concepts of negotiating a traffic island are a bit tricky, [...]

It’s my birthday on Saturday and I’m off work tomorrow so, as tradition dictates, I popped to a nearby Chavda to buy some cakes and biscuits. As I was driving back through some roadworks I noticed the roadsigns were all written in bloody Welsh with English translations underneath.  Welsh.  In Telford, which is about 40 [...]

On the outskirts of Telford is an industrial estate, Hortonwood and next to it a small village, Horton.  Access to the village is via a narrow road, Horton Lane. Horton Lane is relatively unknown but it’s a useful time saver if you’re trying to get out of the back end of the industrial estate at [...]

The General Secretary of OPEC, the group with de-facto control of the world’s oil supply, has said that No Mandate Brown is “confused” about oil prices. Abdalla Salem El-Badri wasn’t best pleased with El Gordo’s pronouncement that volatile oil prices were to blame for global economic problems and that OPEC should do more to stabilise [...]

According to South Worcestershire Police accidents were up 1,000% the other day thanks to the icy road conditions. I’d be surprised if it was only 1,000% here in Telford because the roads on Wednesday were lethal.  The council sent the gritters out the night before but they’ve started using this new type of grit which [...]

Telford & Wrekin Council are on the offensive promoting their plans to put average speed cameras on the A442 dual carriageway through the town and surprise, surprise, the BBC have stepped in to do their propaganda work for them. The A442 dual carriageway – more commonly known as the Eastern Primary locally – is one [...]

The cheapest price I’ve seen for petrol this last couple of days has been Tesco at 94.9p/litre. It’s still got to drop at least 20p/litre to get back to the price it was the last time oil was this cheap but spare a thought for our Dutch friends – the petrol station over the road [...]

Metric Martyr, Neil Herron, was in the High Court in London today to seek a judicial review into the civil parking fines system. Neil has argued for a long time that the parking adjudication service isn’t impartial because it’s funded by taking a percentage of any fines that are paid. The Human Rights Act says [...]

Regular reader, KeithS, send me this message this morning: You can rely on the EU never to give up on a bad cause… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/3075189/EU-resurrects-daytime-running-lights-plan.html  You’re not wrong Keith.  Back in October 2006, Federal Europe said that it wanted every vehicle to have its lights on at all times.  They said it would save lives but motorcycling [...]

The Drivers Alliance has officially launched its website today as news of the British government’s rubber stamping of road pricing trials hit the papers. The Drivers Alliance was started by Peter Roberts, the Telford man who started the 1.8m signature Downing Street petition opposing road pricing. Pop over and take a look.  Peter is a [...]

Boris Johnson has over-ruled the eco-loonies in London and cancelled the pedestrianisation of Parliament Square and the purchase of hygdrogen-powered vehicle for use in the public sector around London. Ken Livingstone, the odious turd that preceded Boris, approved plans for the pedestrianisation of Parliament Square which would have involved paving over the grass and banning [...]

The M6 Toll Road has seen a drop in traffic numbers of over 13% in the last year. The road was the first toll motorway in the UK and is operated by Midlands Expressway, a private company that spent a huge wedge of taxpayers money along with another huge wedge of private money on building [...]

About 90,000 Spanish lorry drivers started a protest at rising fuel prices at midnight last night. Some trucks trying to cross picket lines have had their windscreens smashed and their lights ripped out and tyres slashed. French fishermen were, a week ago, ramming yachts in harbour during a protest at rising fuel prices. There are protests [...]

Hundreds of hauliers are heading to both London and Cardiff to protest at obscene fuel prices. The Wales protest will be travelling from Llanelli to Cardiff and the London protest is going from Kent to London. The British government blames high oil prices for the price of fuel but this is bollocks – about 80% [...]

Federal Europe is currently working on plans to fine car manufacturers for every vehicle they produce that exceeds the finger in the air figure of 130g/km of Carbon Dioxide emissions.  The fine is expected to be £68 per gramme. Of course, with this being the EU, the regulations are ridiculously ill conceived and designed to [...]

Ian Taylor, a builder from Gloucestershire, has cut his car in half with and angle grinder rather than let wheel clamping bandits, NCP, take his car away. He bought a knackered old Fiesta for his son but it was beyond economical repair so he declared it off-road and parked it on his drive while he [...]

Some of the hauliers that protested in London earlier this week arranged a surprise blockade of the Stanlow oil refinery in Ellesmere Port yesterday in protest at fuel prices. According to my local rag, the Shropshire Star, “Jim Jordan, of Shrewsbury-based Jordan’s Transport, said the surprise protest was aimed at building a momentum following an [...]

Haulage companies from Shrewsbury (my cousin is there – I saw him on BBC News!) have travelled to London today to protest against rising costs of running their trucks. Fuel prices are at an all-time high and hauliers are asking for a cut in road tax for lorries.  If they get their way it won’t [...]

Three things that piss me off on the roads: 1. People driving 4×4′s or road versions of World Rally Championship winning cars driving down the middle of the road to avoid driving over speed bumps. 2. People driving tractors down a busy road at 8 o’clock in the morning. 3. People who drive round islands [...]

On April 1st a new scheme came into force to allow pensioners to have fee off-peak travel around England. Previously they were entitled to only off-peak travel within their local authority. Pensioners in Scotland and Wales have been entitled to free public transport at any time throughout their own country for several years and in [...]

The system of illegal and unconstitutional summary justice in the form of parking fines has been “reformed” but still has no legal legitimacy. The Bill of Rights says that “any promise of fine or forfeiture before conviction is illegal and void” – a traffic warden, police officer or private contactor are not judges or juries and any [...]