Standby for a whacking great price rise on all new cars brought to you by Brussels

There is a very interesting item in the Sunday Times Driving section today regarding new regulations being introduced by those non-elected dim-wits of the EU in Brussels.

Reckoned to add £2000 to the cost of all new cars the paper reckons it will cause a huge drop in new car sales after September 2015 when the new Euro6 regulations come into force. Basically NO current engine can be re-engineered to comply - hence LR's new Hotfire engines. The idea is to reduce NOx emissions ( we have already had this on ships for two years) but after 2014 all new cars will have to have Automatic Emergency Braking to get a 5* Euroncap rating, special aircon coolant ( this came into force in Jan ths year) from 2020 further emissions rules will require CO2 averages to drop from 132g/km to 95g/km. So buy your new car in the next 12 months to avoid a mega price hike. Maybe time to buy up old Land Rovers as an investment as you can bet your bottom Euro that all these "toys" will not enhance the reliability of you new car!

Who gets the extra £2k?
Having to pay an extra 2k on a 50k car is one thing, but it's a big price jump on something like a KIA Rio

Apparently that is the cost to the car maker of building and fitting this kit to gain type approval

So, wait a sec.... Spent more money on installation of a new plant producing these enhancement,thus producing more pollutants by the factory.....just to cut down what we produce while cruising around,.....

Sorry, but I've had enough of the those euro bashing britts not getting their facts right. Those dim-wits are actually elected. You voted for the european parliament. Every country gets a commissioner, who get (or not) approved by the parliament.
The commission can propose a new law, which has to pass through the parliament first. Sometimes laws don't pass. After that, the law needs to get signed off by the council, which for your country is Cameron.

Right, CO2 emissions. Why do you think aston martin came up with cygnet? Anyways, I don't think it's a bad thing and may finally boost some innovation. Let's face it, electric cars are a joke and not very green. I'm hoping on some technological breakthrough in hydrogen.

All of this and the new on the spot fines for being caught using a mobile whilst driving, middle lane hogging and tailgating = £100 to you Sir.

(05-06-2013 09:07pm)Evo-king Wrote:  All of this and the new on the spot fines for being caught using a mobile whilst driving, middle lane hogging and tailgating = £100 to you Sir.

The drivers hogging the middle lane driving @60mph are uselly the ones on the phone. Is that a £200 fine

A severe danger to other road users are: -
Using a Mobile while driving and is police enforceable.
Tailgating the car in front and is police enforcable.

But Hogging the middle lane... is this actually causing a danger to other road users or is it just annoying... and how do you police this.
At what point does that lorry in the inside lane doing 40mph, go from being something you have to pull out to safely overtake to something where you should be pulling in and out again later.
If you are doing 70mph in the middle lane you are theoretically doing the speed limit so it should not matter as no-one can legally go faster than you to need to overtake. At what speed below 70mph does staying in the middle lane become illegal? This one does not wash with me.

I guess the targets will be the ones who stay in the middle lane when it's clear in front. If you are on the inside lane and it's clear and you come up to a car in the middle lane that's doing say 60mph, legally you have to pull out over 2 lanes to get past then 2 lanes to get back in, but most people will just undertake and that is illegal and an accident waiting to happen!!

I myself find this annoying!!

---

(06-06-2013 02:27pm)PhilSkill Wrote:  At what speed below 70mph does staying in the middle lane become illegal? This one does not wash with me.

Although in theory this is very true, a motorway cop told me once that in the real world, if everyone just did 70mph, it wouldn't work! He said they will happily ignore 80mph as long as the driver isn't tailgating or it's very busy.

Then those who also hog the outer overtaking/ so called 'fast' lane when there is no other traffic inside them also need to be hounded, in fact they should instantly loose their licence as invariably they are also driving considerably in excess of the speed limit ......... It is amazing he number of cars I see on the northern sections of the M6 driving along at 80-90 in the outer and for mile after mile when the middle and inside lanes have no traffic in them at all. I have often been flashed by middle lane hoggers driving at 60-65 after coming up the empty except for me inside lane at 70 and then having to pull out across two empty lanes to overtake that one car in miles and then pull back over into the inside/ left hand lane ........... They never seem to get the message .