It is not just us motorists who need breakdown cover, but also those heavier vehicles we see on the roads. In this case it looks like a road sweeper wanted to sweep something other than the road and finds itself in what looks like a ditch. I suppose the ecovery truck is not your normal breakdown cover operator also, but heh! it is all related.
We all need help in times of need and in this case something bigger and heavier was needed to get this roadsweeper on the road again.

A question often asked is what happens about breakdown cover when you lease a car, after all, the car does not belong to you, but the leasing company. Well first most lease cars are bought new and as most manufacturers offer breakdown cover for at least the first year, you are protected. But then it is up to you to make sure you have purchased breakdown cover for that vehicle. If there is a manufacturer issue with the vehicle then you should still be able to return the car to the leasing company, or at least get them to deal with it. But as most callouts for these patrolmen, tend to be things like being locked out or a flat tyre is unlikely that anything a patrolman will do will affect your leasing contract or require any further action to be taken.

However there may be some conditions to do with your leasing contract including damage to the vehicle. So if you have clipped a curb or the paintwork got scratched breaking into your leased car, you may need to get this fixed under the contract of you lease deal.

Well it has been some years since breakdown cover organisations have been directly related to f1 as sponsors tend to be on an international scale with huge amounts of money invested. However a programme on Eurosport called the Factory clearly showed a Williams F1 car being driven around Red Square in Russia with Green Flag breakdown cover right across Nakajima’s helmet. Then in the F1 magazine there is a competition from Green Flag to experience Formula One car at the Italian Grand Prix showing the Williams car with Green Flag written all over it.

Then the picture starts to come together when you remember that RBS bank owns Green Flag and of course for those who watch F1, will know that RBS is and has been promoted worldwide on William cars for some time now.

As RBS owns or controls many insurance departments for Direct Line insurance to Churchill, you wonder if this Williams car will find itself decorated in many different liveries to suit the marketing and is it possible that RBS has demanded more for their money, with pictures of the car with all their brands.

Lets be honest there will not be many people on Russia who will know what Green Flag breakdown cover is, or even the Italians in Monza this year. The bad news is the competition to win the F1 experience from Green Flag has now closed.

But a separate competition run by Williams to drive a F1 car may be still open, which will include driving against other competitors in other classes before the winner gets to drive the car. Wonder if this car will have Green Flag on it also?

Ok we know that RAC do hundreds of thousands of call outs each year to stricken motorists right around the UK, so what could be so popular that 9000 of them were for the same reason. Well we are not talking about those common faults like a flat battery, or starting issues, we are talking about cars that have a serious oil issue.

According to the RAC 1 in 5 cars do not have enough oil in them, this prompted Tim form the Fifth gear programme to do some serious research on the subject by deliberately getting his proton to seize because he had drained it of oil, so we could know what to look out. Even with the entire racket, even with all the commotion, the RAC tells us than 25 cars everyday will end their life this way. Not through low oil but through insufficient oil that ruins the engine.

Now many believe the RAC breakdown cover is good, but unfortunately roadside assistance has not moved on to exchanging engine son the roadside, so unless you have a recovery policy, the rest of the day is going to be finding a towing service to get your car to the local garage, who will then quote you an arm and leg for a replacement engine.

Checking your oil is easy and a hell of a lot cheaper than replacing an engine and it may cut down those 9000 breakdown cover calls the RAC are forced to do with oil issues.
Here is the video clip from 5th gear on Tim’s Oil campaign.

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.

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 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.

The breakdown cover service provider Gem Motoring Assist have put together a small video with skid control UK on how to avoid a skid. It goes through the basis from under steer to over steer and explains that nearly every accident on UK roads will avoid a skid of some sort, no matter what the weather conditions are. Of course it is the loss of control that kills people, so it is good to see a motoring organisation like this, giving instruction in how to drive more safely.

We accept we should have done this earlier at Christmas time, but we wish all our readers and those who have bought breakdown cover using the links from our site a happy and safe 2009 and hope you don’t need to call out that emergency call out service

Of course there is another set of people we should also recognise and that is those staff, patrolmen, call out engineers and garage owners who have delivered roadside assistance to stricken motorists overt the holiday period, both in the UK and around d the world. Without these guys many motorists would not have seen their relatives, dropped off Christmas presents or done the charity work this Christmas. Whilst we enjoyed our Christmas break, these breakdown cover patrolmen, made sue they did their best to keep us on the road and enjoy our break, even with the inconvenience, when the car we drove decided now was the time to accumulate a fault. To you guys out there we wish you a happy and safe new year, thank you for your hard work.