Chairman’s Bit

You will already have read the sad news of Mark Goodman’s passing - and this at about the same time of year that Eddie Harrison passed away last year.  Two of the best!

Aural Delights

How many of like (love!) the sound of a V8 engine, whether that’s the well-tuned sound of a Ford Cosworth DFV formulae 1 engine or the burble of a 1970’s Range Rover with the 3.5 litre Oldsmobile V8. It’s only recently that I have become aware of one of the significant technical differences between these two engines. Apparently, the high revving F1 engine has at it’s core a flat-planed crank, whereas that old school low rumble, broad powerband (think Nascar and early Range Rovers) generally comes from an engine with a cross-planed crank and most probably descended from a Detroit design.

Lookout..!

Apparently two in five young drivers admit to illegally reading or sending a phone message (texts) whilst behind the wheel. Forty-three percent of survey respondents aged 17 to 24 said they have illegally written or read a phone message whilst driving in the previous 12 months, according to a survey carried out by IAM RoadSmart.

That is compared to 29 percent of drivers aged 35 to 44 and 10 percent of those aged 45 to 54. One in six (16 percent) of the young drivers said they had texted whilst behind the wheel during at least half of their journeys, and this quite shocked me, 34 percent said they have used a handheld phone to film video footage or take a photo when at the controls of a vehicle.

And Then...

Attempts to cheat driving tests in Britain increased by 47 percent in a year, an investigation has found, sparking concerns about road safety.

A total of 2,844 cases were recorded in the year to the end of September 2025, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) figures show. That is up from 1,940 during the previous 12 months.

The RAC Foundation motoring charity said that driving test cheats are “putting other road users at risk” and reporting that technology assisted cheating during theory tests made-up the largest proportion of incidents in 2024 to 2025, with 1,113 being recorded.

Who Would Have Guessed...

London is the slowest capital to drive in. Widespread 20 mile an hour speed limits have been blamed for London being the world's slowest capital city to drive in. Research by location technology company TomTom has shown it took an average of 3 minutes and 38 seconds to travel one kilometre (0.6 miles) in the centre of London last year.

Barranquilla, in Colombia was the only one of the 492 towns or cities studied whose roads had an average speed slower than that of London during last year.

Transport for London’s website states that more than half of the capital roads now have a 20 mile an hour limit.

(And my thanks again to various publications for catching my eye with interesting tit-bits, including Autocar and the i -Newspaper). 

THANK YOU!

For continuing to be members of IAM RoadSmart and Stockport Advanced Motorists and especially for continuing to uphold and demonstrate the standards of Advanced Motorists.

The Webmaster would love to hear from motorists with any comments, gripes or anything of interest and can be contacted via the link below.

Contact webmaster:

webmaster@stockportadvancedmotorists.org.uk