It happens every year; the rain comes down as hundreds of thousands go to the popular Glastonbury festival. With this sort of numbers many coming by private car ands sometimes long queues it is very likely that the odd vehicle may just have a breakdown. Then when you add up the lost keys, flat batteries and small collisions that occasionally happen, they the local breakdown cover guys may have a busy time this week. The AA breakdown cover service reckons they helped 200 cars last year just on site.

But it is not just the breakdown cover they offer during festival time, for the AA it has also meant months of preparation. The AA are responsible for putting up the signage that gets these music lovers to the right car parks or where they needs to be. The AA claims it will take 1000 AA signs this year and a month to put them all up safely. Some volunteers also look after the car parks and they also patrol the small roads on motorbikes looking for any stranded motorists to ensure the traffic keeps moving.

All this planning for next year will start as soon as this festival will finish, this show how much preparation is needed for events outside the festival, to ensure more people spend their time watching bands, not sitting in cars.

As the number one in breakdown cover and a claimed voice for motoring issues it made sense that the AA, would go down the environmentally friend route when it can]me to breakdown vehicles. We have not see the first breakdown cover van run on chip van or even electric yet, I suppose for the mileage and the hammering these vehicles get, but the AA has invested in Vectrix Bikes for quick response within the capital.

As we know most call outs are for things like a flat battery, or flat tyres or being locked out of your car. So having bikes that can get through traffic quicker than a car or van for these call outs make sense. To have electric bikes makes even more sense and plays its part to save the world, especially in a heavily polluted are such as a city.

Not only do these bikes work well but they also look good, especially painted in the AA colours., here is a video to show.

You could breakdown anywhere but in a heavy traffic hot weather situation there is a s good as chance as anywhere. An American new information piece on the risks of breakdown down within a heavy traffic situation explains what the insurance companies tell you what to do in these situations. There is some conflict to information we are often given, that you should get out of the car and stay well away from the vehicle here in the UK. We can only assume that the difference is if there is somewhere safe to stand and that you do not have to cross traffic to get there especially if the traffic is at high speed. Having a breakdown cover company to ring at this point could make this situation a little more bearable.

With tough spending budgets expected to dominate the budget today, the motorist sits and wonders how it will affect him or her. This is probably the most awaited (or not ) budget for some time as it is expected that the chandelier will want to claw back some of the moneys spent on keeping or attempting to keep the economy going.

There may be rewards for motorists intending to buy a new car, providing they scrap their old car over 10 years old and maybe some other measures thrown in to get the new car market going again. Of course new car sales also benefit the breakdown cover market also, as most new cars come with free breakdown cove for the first year. It is true that older cars are more likely to breakdown, but with new cars it was a guaranteed membership per car.

Fuel has just gone up a few p per litre so we hope this stay static. The truth is we don’t seem to know what it coming unlike previous years. So let’s keep our fingers crossed.

We have no idea if this is a new documentary series of something new on the box, but we discovered Breakdown Buddies last weekend on Men and Motors. It follows the day to day callouts of local breakdown recovery guys from what we can tell a couple of smaller companies.

The programme is presented on Men and Motors on Sunday afternoon, and you can be sure that we will be watching to write notes about the programmes and the tips that are presented through the series.

On saying that we cannot find out any information on the web about the series, so it could as old as a Mark 1 Escort and there does not seem to an official Men and Motors website that used to transmit some dodgy TV programmes a few years ago, but now seems to have settled down with more family orientated stuff.

In fact we don’t even know how many programmes have been made and if there is much longer to go with the series. Anyway, breakdown buddies is on our radar and you are sure to see a few more posts on the subject here on our breakdown cover blog.

We may speak the same language but the breakdown insurance market seems to have developed in a different way to here in the UK. For a start few Americans know the term breakdown cover and roadside assistance seems to describe it better for them, but if you were look at what is markets the most, the car warranty seems to be a forefront.

I suppose the difference between warranties and say breakdown cover, is the first covers the parts, often covers any work done within a garage, where the UK’s breakdown cover, is purely a service to get you going from the road, or transport your car to a place of your choice depending on the level of protection you have.

Of course even in the UK, new cars are covered by warranties, but it is rarely combined with a recovery service and the work normally has to be done by the correct dealer who has the contract with the manufacturer. Things seem to be more flexible in the States. You can buy warranties, even if your car is over a certain age, and they are prepared to use third party garages to repair the problems.

Warranties can be for a selection of areas on your vehicle of for everything. The example we have below is from a company called Automotive Protection, which focuses on the mechanical side only. So for instance suppose your stitching on your seat were to come away, this would not be covered, where on a new car warranty it would be.

USA does have breakdown cover services as well, or should we say roadside assistance, with triple A being the best known. But the warranty side is much bigger than here in the UK and it is surprising that the big 3 breakdown cover providers, namely the AA, RAC and green Flag have not entered that market in a large way.

This month sees very competitive deals from all 3 big breakdown cover players. Although the price the AA promotes on TV is when you ring the number which id £6 more expensive than online.
Here are the bottom line facts today.

Green Flag from £25: Although this depends on car and mileage factors. You need to fill in the form to find out the correct price.

RAC: They offer cover from £29

The AA: If you buy online they have cover from £29, not the £35 they advertise on TV.

Well lets be honest those who travel on two wheels also need roadside assistance too. If you are fortunate to be a member of the American Motorcycle Association you will now be able to benefit from free roadside assistance.

This is clearly not a marketing video and aimed at the membership rather than out side it, but it does give an inside to AMA membership and how being a part of a group can give benefits, beyond a magazine.

The benefits also include discounts from several retailers relating to motorcycles products, when you subscribe to AMA champion. The real benefit is that this can also be breakdown cover for family members for other vehicles including RV’s. The amazing price for the ideal is only $39 a year. Sometimes we wish we were born on the other side of the Atlantic.

The AA is full of history and although we still see this organisation as breakdown cover and insurance experts, how they formed and their purpose was very different then than now. There was a time when you joined the AA, you were seen a member of a club and was awarded a metal AA badges that you would display proudly on the front of you car, in the days when you had chrome gills to take a metal badge.

The motoring badges have now become collector items, sometime going for tidy sums at collector’s fairs and auctions. The AA badges were used from 1906 right up to 1967, when the traditional square logo that is used today standardised the logo. As usual progress and the need to reduce costs meant that the badge was an unnecessary product, that in later years were just not used even when they were allocated.

Today, even if we wanted to there are very few cars which have the ability to show a metal badge even if we wanted to. So the Automobile Associations collector items are just that, for collectors only and a bit of nostalgia.

The AA website has an article explaining the various badges that were produced over the decades. Now most of us are not bothered about membership of a motoring club. All we want is someone to give us breakdown cover in our time of need and it is down to cost and quality of service that gets our custom, not the design of our badges.

We talk about the history of the Automobile Association but some take it more serious than others. So much so there is are collectors who take pride in locating and collecting badges and anything else related to the old AA motoring club.

There are also AA memorabilia books oriented which detail what was used in which motoring era, from metal badges to the telephone boxes that were every few miles or so on public roads before mobile phone made them obsolete just about.

Some collector items can fetch a tidy sum when sold.

This also expand for the Royal Automobile Club too who although always deemed as the second largest played a huge part in motoring development and road safety. Somehow they also had a reputation for sponsoring motorsport, with eth RAC being a favourite for many years.

The history of the RAC is equally interesting and it on reflection it does seem a shame that everything is about economies of scale and how only by being big can you deliver a real cost effective service. Lets be honest, the price of membership in the 21st century is the cheapest it has ever been in real terms.

A good place to search for motoring club memorabilia is Ebay, where international items can be found also. We should not forget that both the AA and the RAC have a presence in Australia too, so they also have a history to reflect on.