I am now on the M18 going North, not knowing if my car will make it, but for some reason I just want to get home, not ring any breakdown cover company. However as I take the turn off to the A1m, some more bad news, it seems the A1m is closed for road works so I am forced back down the M18 to the Doncaster turn off.

Going into Doncaster I am forced now to go down to 3rd gear to handle all the roundabouts but keep the revs high, I follow the signs until the get less and less and then disappear. I am now back on the M18 and to be honest not sure where I am, as the sat nav is telling me to go back to in to Doncaster. I stop at a service station, get my bearings, but did not want to open the water chamber on the car, in case the steam pushed more water out. I then go from M18 to M62, still with no intention of ringing the breakdown cover company, even though I have paid up and not used them this year.

I now have to dive the car continuously at 4000 revs and as I go downhill, the temp gauge goes crazy, so a very slow journey back up the north east in 3rd gear follows. It felt like i was driving an old Morris Minor, at 50mph.
I got home, stressed and very late, but at least i got there. The next morning, I kept asking myself, why did i not just pull over when I had a chance and ring my breakdown cover company to get them out? As I later found out, that all I need was a few pints of water in the system, I could have been fixed and on my way. Even if I had waited an hour for the call out, I think I would have been home earlier that I was. Even if it had been a bit later, I am sure I would have been less stressed. So do others do what I do? I think they do, when under pressure they just want to get home and will keep going until they are forced to stop and ring their breakdown cover service provider.

I actually could have done a lot of damage to the car and in hindsight was very lucky not to blow the engine or create an accident.

Living in the North East I had a business appointment in South West Midlands for 2.00.pm. Driving down the M18 I saw the sign saying that the M1 was closed from junction 26 to 27. I knew a service station nearby, so I stopped looked at the map (as the sat nav had no other suggestions but the M1) and so decide to go off junction 28 and do a detour. Another 10 minutes and I am back on the road to find myself coming to a dead stop. It seems the info on the signs were wrong, the local radio is now saying road closed from junction 28 to 26.

Here I sat for 1.5 hours until I slowly moved forward to be taken off at Junction 28. When I get there the road is coned off, but behind the cones was a huge breakdown recovery truck, with driver sitting there, lights flashing. I remember thinking, why is he there and not say a police car? I wasn’t aware that breakdown recovery gents would be paid to sit in one place and as it was behind the cones, I had to assume he was there by request.

I eventually got to my meeting 1 hour late and so left the meeting in the dark into Wolverhampton, with sat nav. These are great things, but in rush hour do not give you instructions quick enough as by the time they tell you to take the 3rd exit and the next roundabout, it is already to late to get into lane, as the locals know what they are doing.

But here is where the real problems started, as I go round in circles, even with sat nav, I notice the temp gauge on my car getting very high. At this point I think, do I stop and ring my breakdown cover service? As I put my foot down to move away from the round about I notice, the temp gauge goes to normal. Very quickly i notice that with high revs the car seems to get back to normal.

I now start looking for somewhere to stop, but inner cities at rush hour, do not accommodate car breakdowns, so i decided to keep going until I got away from traffic and then decide what to do,
Getting out of traffic was 190 miles away and by now I am on the motorway, driving in 4th gear at 65mph to ensure revs are above 3250. Should I ring the breakdown cover service, once again went through my brain. But the point of this post, was to discuss why I chose not too and just keep on going until I could go no further so for now, I decided lets keep going. So no phone call for now!

Part 2 coming soon.

A bit more digging into the road safety poster seen in Leeds Bradford Airport, brought up Green Flags own campaign. But once again the year does not match but the time of year does.

It seems Green Flag had another road safety week in 2007 from 5th to 11th November, which is of course similar time that this post, but I could not find anything written about road safety week 2008. Maybe I am just not looking hard enough, but I did look under the road safety section of the Green Flag site.

You tube has several United Nations road safety campaign videos, but again I could not find any related to the Green Flag campaign. Just for the record here is the United Nations video.

As I came through the tunnel taking me to the arrivals areas in Leeds Bradford airport I saw a huge banner with a Green Flag Breakdown truck saying these words “Have a safe Journey”. Most travellers never raised an eyebrow, just walked by thinking about just getting home or to their destinations. So it got me wondering why the banner was there at all, as clearly one was going to buy Green Flag Breakdown cover from an airport, especially when so many passengers were foreign, or would use a hire car.

The only thing I could come up with was” Brand Awareness”, but even that did not wash as it did not seem to be a cost effective way of promoting Green Flag.

So a few searches on Google came up with Road Safety week and the fact that Green Flag had in fact sponsored this worthy cause, and even though it did not say Road safety Week anywhere I saw walking through the airport, I have come to the conclusion, this must be the reason.

Actually as far as the road safety week website is concerned, I can only find a relationship back in 2006, so not sure if they have done their own campaign, or is just a very old awareness banner.

For those patriotic Formula One fans out there, if there was a time to have a nervous breakdown, it was the last 2 laps of the Brazilian Grand prix last Sunday. With a clear position to have enough points to win the world championship, he gave way to let Vettell through, making him at position 6th, just not enough to win, but with 2 corners to go, he passed the Toyota of Glock and went back to fifth, allowing him enough points to a deserved world championship.

You can’t help feeling sad for Massa, who did nothing wrong that race and his family, who though he had won the championship as he went over the finish line. Especially his father, as the TV cameras zoomed in on both the celebrations and then tha bad news was told, when Lewis took position 5 back. Hearts were high, then low then high again, and a nervous breakdown was defiantly on the cards, during those final laps. What a finish.

It was shame for David Coulthard though, who finished his last F1 race on the first corner, once again hot from behind. This guy was well respected in the sport. The BBC will cover F1 next year, let’s hope the do as good or even better job than ITV.

Oh yes, a small campaign form breakdown cover net. Martin Brundle for the BBC.

One of the upsetting jobs breakdown recovery vehicle companies have to do is remover cars from the scene of an accident, sometime where someone of many have lost their lives. This tends not to be something the national breakdown cover organisations do not get involved with as they do not have local storage facilities for the salvaged vehicles, but they could get involved in smaller shunts.

What determines whether someone walks away from a crash like this, is all based around NCAP testing, using dummies and specific crash tests to see how your car would suffice in different types of accidents.

The AA who are the largest breakdown cover provider in the UK, were one of the founder members of the European NCAP as a motoring club proving an interested in car safety as well as the normal breakdown cover service they provide.

Of course the testing is not based around keeping that car on the road, or removing the need for a breakdown cover truck. Most tests are about allowing the outside shell to take the impact and compress, reducing the impact on the shell that the passengers would sit in.

Very often you can then see crushed vehicles on breakdown recovery trucks, that passengers have walked away from, because the cocoon they sit in has remained intact, when parts all around have fallen off or have been crushed.

Actually it took a green flag breakdown cover engineer over 45 minutes and a 5th gear presenter under 1 minute, so what was that about? Well it was an episode of 5th gear talking about a Renault Megane, where it is almost impossible to change a headlight bulb, to the point it recommends you use a dealer to do.

They invited a Green Flag breakdown cover man to do an experiment, where the engineer would get to change the light bulb in the Megane, but the presenter would do the same job on a VW. The results were conclusive, that it just so hard to change the light bulb on the Megane. Quotes for a dealer to do so were up to £250 and more, but in fairness did start from around £30 + vat for one hours labour, as it requires removing certain parts off the car. But who wants to pay £40 to by the time you ad VAT and the price of the light bulb, as who would pay the £250 or so, it is just a silly design.
In the end, the breakdown cover engineer need not have been embarrassed as it clearly is bad design, but you can’t help thinking if it took a trained breakdown cover engineer over 45 minutes to do this job, how long would it take a member of the public, or in fact can it be done at all.

Their argument was the design was this way to achieve its 5 star safety award, but this was quickly crushed as the VW, had the same safety rating. The Green Flag breakdown engineer was a good sport and probably knew the outcome before he started, this was a good example of keeping us infirmed, keep up the good work

We reported on our last blog about how good it was to see the AA on TV campaigning for us motorists, but what we failed to mention, is that this breakdown cover organisation does report on motoring issues via its website.

The latest report dated the 1st September 2008, tells us about the stupid rules that are applied to us motorists and mirrors reports seen on the national news over the week.

The new press release by the AA is based on a guide by the Flexible Thinking Forum and is called “overcome Stupidity” and challenges stupid decisions, like yellow lines that are only a few inches long and would not apply to a full sized car. Bus lanes which go past business property, meaning anyone leaving should get a ticket. Another example is, charging for the, length of car in Norwich, irrelevant of carbon emission output.

There are many more examples found by breakdown cover net that have just not been thought through, and maybe are in place just to tax the motorist more. It is a shame that these reports are not just that bit more in your face. Of course selling breakdown cover and their insurance polices are the priority, so you have to specifically go looking for these press releases to show he work the AA are doing to promote motoring needs throughout the UK.

It is probably time that we here at breakdown cover Net, start going through previous press releases together with other motoring organisation and help spread the word.

It has been a while since it has been seen but it was good to see the AA (who are the biggest provider of breakdown cover in the UK) come on to TV and campaign that although oil prices have dropped, the price we pay for our petrol does not seem to have reduced by the same level.

For us here at breakdown Cover net it was a refreshing sight, something would have occurred much more in the past, when these emergency recovery services were more of a motoring club than the insurance organisations they are today.
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It probably is ironic that in the Golden Age of motoring right up until recently, most breakdown cover organisations had patrolmen or women using motorcycles to attend stricken vehicles, but there was never a real emphasis on promoting services for the stricken motorcyclists on their machines.

Over the years the amount of motorcycles has been cut down to allow for large vans with all the tools and spare parts necessary to fix a car by the roadside. It is also true that many organisations use agents to attend emergencies and so the motorcycle patrolman is far in-between.

I started to say this was ironic in that because of the huge competition within this market, a much larger focus is being applied to offering breakdown cover for motorbikes with similar options to the car owner. Most the operators including the big 3 offer options to get the motorcyclist back on the road to taken to a place of their choice based on the policy they have bought, just like a car emergency insurance agreement.

Of course operators have focused more on the car market because of economies of scale and there are far more cars on the road than bikes. But with competition and lets be honest reduced premiums in real terms against our earnings, then in order to keep a market share motorbike breakdown cover polices are being advertised more than ever. This does mean more training for the engineers and possibly carrying more parts, but it does mean more members.

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