Believe it or not tommorrow celebrates 50 years of motoring driving when the first stretch of the M1 was openend. For most of us the goal of driving is to get from A to B in the shortedt possible time allwoing us to get one with our lives or see and vsit things just not possible without a car. The motorway brought the south closer to the North and then as time went on, just about every town and City to each other on the fastest roads possible.
It is hard to rembember (i am not old enough) what it was like to be driving on roads where 3pmph was as fast you were going to get, even if there were countless vehicles on the road. As more vehicles hit the road the traditional motoring clubs found themsleves expanding to deal with the extra demand, to the point where today insurance companies manily own the interests of the main breakdown cover providers.
The AA show in their press release a fact file on th M1 and celebrate in the general success of the motorways, even if we hate the traffic jams and roadworks that take us from 70mph to 5mph in some cases. It would be great to read the RAC’s opinion of the motorway system and Green Flag’s also, although this organistion was not around in that name back in the fifties.
We al want the roads to be faster and safer and even though we all want new cars, we hate it when othere buy cars and clog up the roads. Well thats life and until we have spaceships, it looks like motorways are here to stay with no alternatives.
Like many others trying to switch off from work over the Christmas period is not that easy. Over the holiday period there was extensive media coverage on the chance that those involved in an accident under the age of 25, would have alcohol in their system was 35% of all accidents.
I am very vague on the details; the information was presented by Green Flag and the safety organisation Brake. It seemed an easy solution to wait until after the holiday period then visit the Green Flag site direct and get the full details. As it so happens the press release page on the Green Flag site is well out of date and very disappointing. In fact the last date of any pres release was Feb 2008. Although there was much press information on the Brake site, the information all seemed to relate to car accidents from the BBC site.
You would have thought that an organisation as big as Green Flag with its full breakdown cover operation and claims of supporting road safety in the UK, would have the information at hand. Of course if the road safety news is separated from the main news, it should be easier to find.
This is an opinion only and subject to different interpretations.
Some quick facts of why the Honda Clarity, the Hydrogen Cell powered car, could have the solutions and technology to change the world. Here are some reasons.
Reduce The Need For Oil
The financial world is reliant on oil prices, with some nations currently extremely rich because of the reserves of oil they own. Removing the need for this oil, will not only reduce prices, but also may in fact take away the whole income for that nation.
Change The Need Of Car Parts
With only one moving part within the electric motor, the car parts industry would need to change drastically, to adapt to the new electrical technology. It is more likely that those already with the electrical industries would take over this demand.
Garages And Servicing
To say a washing machine serviceman may be more qualified to repair damaged motors may be nearer the truth than we would like to admit. Of course there will still be some normal car parts on the new breed of cars, but new training, equipment and tools will be required.
New Taxation
Our road tax is currently calculated on how much C02 gasses come out of our exhaust but the Honda Clarity has zero emissions, meaning zero road tax. Of course it is unlikely that the government will let us go tax free on the vehicles we own, so we could see road tolls or other taxation procedures put in place, to get some of this money back.
Emergency Roadside Services
The breakdown cover patrolman, such as the AA, RAC and Green Flag will need to be retrained, all vans which themselves by now may run by fuel cells, new tools and there may not even be anything like the breakdown cover call outs that we have today. After all when has an electric motor failed to start in the cold?
It is hard to promote why breakdown cover could be an important purchase in terms of saving you money time and stress. Well this is written when America votes for its next President, and election that is probably one of the most important in USA history based on the events of the last 8 years.
Lewis Hamilton has won the F1 world championship, bringing some pride back to the UK; the place motor racing was born and has some amazing talent. Even Ferrari relies on chief engineers from the UK, to compete with Maclaren.
But probably the main reason for a reduced demand for breakdown cover is the worldwide financial crisis with banks around the world needing bailing out from Governments and tax payer’s money.
Christmas is around the corner and families are more concerned about finding money
to buy presents for the kids, than that breakdown cover policy for the car. These are trying times with uncertainty all around.
Breakdown cover net will be visiting the USA very soon, and will be writing about how the USA are handing things. Will breakdown cover still be an important purchase for them after the election? Let’s wait and see.
Today mark a remarkable take over of many of the UK banks in order to bring calm to this financial worldwide crisis. What appears to a victim of these takeovers is the loss of top jobs in the banking sector. The RBS Boss Sir Fred Goodwin stepped down in rumour it was part of the conditions to inject billions of pounds of UK tax paying money into RBS, to save it from collapse.
RBS of course owns Green Flag Breakdown cover as well as many other insurance companies such as Direct Line and Privilege. In theory this may mean that when you ring your Green Flag breakdown Cover Emergency service, you are in fact calling a government owned organisation, or to be more exact you and me as tax payers.
We have yet to figure out if this rescue deal puts any other breakdown cover company under government control or not, until all the details of all banks and money used to buy shares becomes more available. It might be that when you pay your annual breakdown cover premium you are putting money back into the tax system, or hopefully at the very least, your purchase could increase the value of shares, so when those shares are sold, there is a profit to go back to the people of the UK.
I bet you never thought about that, the last time you bought breakdown cover. Let’s hope this brave decision gets the UK economy back on its feet and the confidence back into buying financial products ad services again.
Supermarkets are into everything nowadays and 3 of the largest names in shopping have associations with the big 3 breakdown cover companies. The largest supermarket has partnered with Green Flag to offer its customers and it looks like they are promoting it more than ever.
Spread across the local Tesco car park was a Tesco breakdown cover banner, something I hadn’t seen for any food products. Looking on their website you see a further promotion, get a £15 Tesco voucher if you buy breakdown cover through them, or Green Flag to be more exact. What I couldn’t compare was if when the form is filled in the price is the same as buying Green Flag breakdown cover direct.
There does seem to a conflict here though, because I am sure I regularly see the RAC selling breakdown cover in the foyer, with the man in the uniform and the desk, you know what I mean.
It does seem strange that Tesco would put so much effort into selling breakdown cover to the extent of putting up banners everywhere.
You can’t help thinking there would be more mileage in other products, especially with the competition there currently is within the market and the financial banks. It is one thing putting out some breakdown cover leaflets on the checkouts, but to offer £15 of vouchers and spend money to sell a service on behalf of someone else, does seem a bit overkill, but heh, who am I?
Well it has been another scary day on the stock market with most of not all financial institutions taking a huge hit on share value. One of the hardest hit was the RBS or Royal bank Of Scotland that owns both Direct Line and Green Flag Breakdown Cover brands.
It was reported that at one point the Green flag breakdown cover owner lost 39% of its share value today, which of course has many people very jittery.
The breakdown cover arm of its organisation is just a drop in the ocean compared to the other banks and insurance companies the Royal Bank Of Scotland owns, in fact it was reported today, the reason why many had not pulled their finds of their bank, is because they do not know that Royal Bank Of Scotland owns that particular bank.
Of course here, we are only interested in breakdown cover and there is no doubt that over the last month or so, sales form our site has dropped, even though traffic has remained steady. A decision by the Chancellor about our economy will be made tonight for tomorrow morning, and as many look to their savings and investments, we will be looking to see how the breakdown cover owner is doing for their cash flow and will it affect jobs or even the ownership of the Green Flag breakdown cover brand.
For the RAC and The AA you turn up at their site and within seconds you know how much your breakdown cover premium is likely to be with easy links to follow through to your chosen policy type, but it just is not that easy with Green Flag.
There are price prompts as you arrive on the homepage, which look pretty attractive, but at this point I doubt many would expect to fill in a form o at least 2 pages with all the criteria of your car, before you get the breakdown cover quote. Inevitably it ends up being more expensive that those prices on the homepage.
Because the car was nearly 10 years old, we have to presume this pushed the recovery premium up, to an annual cost just below what The AA was quoting without the form filling. You can’t help thinking that many who do not like filling in forms with personal information, may add false information about themselves, i.e.post code, and telephone number, just on case they did not like the final quote. After all, Green Flag now have that information which could be used for further unwanted communication.
We are not suggesting this would actually happen, but you have to ask the question of why they need you email address, home address, and other sensitive information if it plays no part in the final price that is quoted for your breakdown cover policy.
It would be a better procedure if you filled in the factors only that affected your breakdown cover premium quote and then if the potential customer agrees to go ahead; at that point they could continue with the form and add the personal information.
The truth is that as soon as the form filling procedure starts, there will be a section of the public that will click away, as for decades you would join your motoring club, for a set fee.
It says that modern recovery vehicles are less than 40 years old with other recovery vehicles being used before then. Modern clean equipment is the order of the day. There is a more serious side to this, a charity trying to raise money.
It is a promotional video of a charity aimed at helping those who work within the breakdown recovery business and maybe have suffered an injury or worse, working within this industry.
This is the first I have heard of this charity and it may be I will add more information, in their words rather than mine in this short period of time.
It asks for a donation at the end. We are doing our bit by showing the video first and maybe some more information in the future. It can be a dangerous job working in the breakdown recovery industry, by the roadside, anytime day or night.
I promised some footage of the 2007 tow show in the uk which is a show for recovery trucks in the UK. Here is an interview, talking about the requirements of the UK recovery vehicle market in 2007.
I am sure there are a few foriegn voices in the video, so the world tow show may be an apropriate title. Not for the avaerage individual, but if you are into tow truck or in the breakdown cover game, you may want to watch.