TOPS NEWS – May 2005
Police have recovered stolen
model trains and ships valued at over £1m after an undercover operation. The models were taken from the Märklin
museum in Göppingen, Germany.
The Transport Select
Committee is again looking into the possibility of toll charging
motorists on busy roads but the Government has agreed that this would not come
into force for ten years.
A fully-equipped fire
engine was stolen and crashed through fire station doors at
Tenbury Wells and driven 5 miles before ending up in a field. A young man was taken to hospital with
slight injuries.
F1 drivers have been
told not to wear jewellery and watches when racing - this seems rather late
coming but should be adhered to by all competitors. Girls were told not to wear normal bras ages ago.
Women account for only 17% of
speeding convictions and only 3% of dangerous driving.
The
Government has ordered a review of driving licence applications for
the over 70s. It is expected to
recommend an annual medical check-up, in line with many European
countries. Denmark requires checks
every four years from the age of 70 and every year from 80.
Police are
installing more than 2,000 more cameras on motorways and in city centres. The cameras which read car number-plates,
link to computers which check the car and driver details such as whether the
car is stolen and if the driver is a criminal.
A new Parking Eye camera can alert wardens when a purchased ticket has
expired on a car windscreen.
The
Mercedes-Benz Company has been having a roller coaster ride recently with
the announcement of a recall of 1.3m vehicles because of technical problems.
This has done serious damage to the company's image of being a quality car
manufacturer.
China has 2% of
the world’s cars but accounts for 15% of accidents. 680 people are killed every day on the roads with an estimated
242,000 last year. The Government is
making driving tests tougher.
Rolls-Royce
must
sell more than 1,000 cars annually to be profitable, says its former head.
The entire UK car
repair industry has been given a final warning by the National
Consumer Council over "shoddy service and rip-off charges".
Police caught Ian Tyre doing 145
mph in his Honda NSX. The jury decided
he was not guilty of dangerous driving.
The BMW Group
has
opened a new tool maintenance facility at its Swindon Plant.
UK New car
registrations fell 5.1% on the year in March.
Some Police forces
have
turned to vegetable oil blended with diesel fuel to power their vehicles
including the Metropolitan police in London, Wiltshire, South & West
Yorkshire, Humberside, and Tayside.
Metrocab has handed over its first new purpose-built taxi since the
Tamworth based company went into administration 14 months ago with a loss of
100 jobs. Initially one Metrocab taxi is being built each week rising to five
p.w. The cab is seen as a rival to the
‘London black cab’ which was originally launched in the 1980s with a Ford
diesel engine, but the current Metrocab has a Toyota drive train.
A school bus driver received a
(speed camera) summons for driving at 81 mph but was let off when his tacho showed
he was travelling at 29 mph.
A section of the M4 between
junctions 14 and 18 in Wiltshire is being monitored by mobile speed cameras to
try and enforce the 70 mph limit. A £60
fine and 3 penalty points may be given for any speed in excess of 70 mph. Motorways are five times safer per mile
driven than the average road and eight times safer than urban A roads according
to motoring groups which have accused the Wiltshire Camera Partnership of
trying to raise revenue without any evidence that safety would be
improved.
Foreign registered cars
very rarely receive parking tickets although 250,000 ‘foreign’ parking
tickets were issued last year and remain unpaid – estimated lost revenue £12m.
Speed cameras
officially
made the government £20m last year compared with £1.1m three years ago.
The Bentley Arnage
Drophead Coupé is to go into production.
It will have a twin-turbocharged 450bhp/336kW V8 engine, double-wishbone
suspension and a hydraulically operated three-layer canvas roof which retracts
in under 30 seconds.
Recent figures show that sales of diesel fuel now match petrol. In 2004
total retail motor fuel sales in the UK was 28.2 million tonnes. The International Energy Agency reports that
retail petrol sales have fallen 15% in the last 10 years while diesel fuel
sales have more than doubled. Last year
184 forecourts closed down, shutting at the rate of 15 a month.
General Motors earnings dropped a massive 243% year on year in the first quarter of
2005 with automotive operations earnings plunging 331%. Financial arm GMAC
failed to gallop to the rescue as its earnings were down 4.7%. General Motors also announced a recall of
more than two million vehicles in the USA.
The Motor Sports Association has vowed to fight all the way to Brussels to safeguard
the future of nearly 50% of its
sanctioned motor sport events after the government decided to stop subsidies to
farmers who allow part of their land to be used, even temporarily, for any form
of motor sport.
Jaguar is reported to have
radically cut back production of its X-type model after worldwide sales fell by
nearly a third.
The head of the Metropolitan Police traffic division faces disciplinary
action after being driven in a marked police car at 86mph because he was late
for a meeting at his HQ near Buckingham Palace.
Police raided 35 Royal Mail workers homes and arrested 36 postal
staff belonging to a Congolese and Angolan gang in North London who were
stealing cheque books. In Brixton
£5,500 cash was found and police took away several Audi cars and a BMW under
the Proceeds of Crime Act, they also seized passports and driving licences in
multiple identities but with the same photograph.
Bangladeshi customs
officials found luxury cars, large-screen television sets and
refrigerators in a container declared to be carrying metal scrap -- so they
made it just that. Hundreds of people watched as officials from the National
Board of Revenue used bulldozers to crush a Mercedes Benz and a Toyota car and
other luxury goods at a railway container terminal in Dhaka.
TOPS NEWS is an abridged version of one
section of the TOPS magazine sent to members.
Trisha Pilkington