When I first saw this story about Portsmouth City Council introducing a 20mph speed limit to most residential streets, I have to confess that my immediate reaction was that it was a bit silly and would just result in increased CO2 emissions - 20mph isn’t a very fuel-efficient speed for modern vehicles.

However, I soon changed my hastily formed judgement - because having read through Portsmouth Council’s press release, I think it seems quite a good, carefully-planned idea.

Here’s why. I live in an old town too - and on my street and most of the ones around it, anything greater than 20mph is definitely unnecessary and usually unsafe. Portsmouth City Council hasn’t reduced the limits on any of the more major roads - so once you’re out of your street you can progress through the city at the usual 30/40mph limit.

The other reason it seems sensible is that none of the 1,200 streets affected had an average speed above 24mph anyway - so it’s not much of a loss.

If you live in Portsmouth (or anywhere else with 20mph limits), how have you found them? Have they been applied inappropriately and without consultation, or have the local council been intelligent and thoughtful about it? Leave a comment below with your thoughts and experiences.

20mph speed limits are clearly here to stay in the UK, and are getting more popular by the day. Let’s just hope that councils don’t succumb to the temptation to use them in combination with speed cameras to raise tax revenue…

Hot on the heels of my recent post on the number of drivers who fill up diesel vehicles with petrol each year and have to be rescued by the RAC, the good people at DDN Ltd have got in touch to let me know that they have come up with a solution to this problem.

The problem, you’ll remember, comes about because the filler neck of diesel vehicles is larger than that of petrol vehicles - meaning that a petrol nozzle will slip in just as easily as a diesel nozzle.

It’s a problem that seems to be growing, too - in 2007 50,000 RAC members and 20,000 Green Flag members alone managed to fill up with the wrong fuel. Leaving safety and environmental issues from the disposal of the fuel aside, misfuelling has a huge financial impact. Just ask anyone who has had to have their diesel vehicle repaired after running it on petrol…

DDN’s solution seems simple. Named the Misfuelling Prevention Device, it’s essentially a cleverly-designed sleeve that fits inside your existing filler neck. Once in place, any attempt to insert a petrol nozzle will be blocked - only diesel nozzles will fit in.

Fitting seems extremely simple and once in place, no further maintenance or adjustment is required. DDN say that it should last the lifetime of the vehicle.

The MPD costs around £50+VAT for fleets and most popular makes and models are or will be supported. The device has been successfully trialled with a variety of fleet operators - including one police force. For more news, see DDN’s website. I’m not sure that it’s available for retail customers yet.

I would imagine that van hire companies could become enthusiastic customers for such a product - anyone driving a rental van who usually drives a petrol car must be a prime candidate for misfuelling. Still, it’s a problem that can affect anyone - as this RAC employee found out! (Although in fairness it is a windscreen fitter’s van, not a breakdown van.)

(All pictures courtesy of DDN Limited.)

‘Getting the best out of your vehicle’ is something that means different things to different people - but according to new research by the RAC, what it doesn’t usually mean is saving fuel.

Amazingly - given that we have some of the highest petrol and diesel prices in Europe - large numbers of UK drivers don’t seem to know or care how to get the best fuel economy from their vehicles.

According to the RAC, £2.2bn worth of fuel is wasted every year by drivers who ignore basic green driving techniques. That’s 267 Olympic-sized swimming pools full of fuel…

Contrary to popular belief, eco-friendly driving doesn’t mean dawdling along at 50mph on motorways and never accelerating hard. Instead, it’s simply a question of understanding your vehicles a little better and applying some common sense.

Here’s a selection of the RAC’s tips for green driving - tailored to the needs of hire van drivers:

1. Don’t bother ‘warming up’ the engine before you set off. Modern engines don’t need to be warmed up - infact, they warm up better if you ease off slowly as soon as you’ve started up.
2. Switch off instead of idling. If you’re going to be stationary for more than a few minutes, idling just burns fuel pointlessly. Switch off and startup again when you’re ready to move.
3. Don’t thrash it! Modern turbo-diesels of the kind found in vans pull very well from relatively low revs. Make good use of this and keep the revs well below the red band, changing evenly through the gears.
4. Look further ahead - breaking and accelerating unnecessarily wastes a lot of fuel. Your goal should be a steady, consistent speed. If you can ease off the accelerator slightly well in advance of an obstacle, you’ll use much less fuel than if you brake hard at the last minute and then have to change through the gears again.
5. Don’t lug around anything you don’t need - extra weight equals increased fuel consumption. It’s all to easy to keep everything plus the kitchen sink in a van - don’t if you don’t need to.
6. Tyre pressures. Even if you’ve only hiring a van for a few days, keep an eye on them. Low tyre pressures mean higher fuel consumption and an increased likelihood of punctures.

Following this advice ain’t difficult - it’s mostly just good, safe driving. But it’s amazing how many van drivers don’t do it. Are you one of them?

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Most of us don’t really care about the CO2 emissions of our cars. There are simply far too many other things that are more important if you’re buying a used car.

Sure, lots of drivers like to talk the eco-friendly talk - but when it comes to parting with their cash, they don’t point their wallets at that low emission 1 litre Wippo Thingamibob. And with good reason.

In fact, with at least five good reasons. Here are drivers’ top priorities when buying a used car, according to a new survey* of UK drivers:

1. Reliability - 77%: The only surprise here is that it isn’t higher. Are there that many people who like fixing their own cars?
2. Safety - 54%: I suspect this mostly represents buyers with families (and it’s also a popular justification for buying a 4×4!)
3. Performance - 48%: When you’re paying all that money, you want to enjoy using it - don’t you?
4. Styling - 33%: It’s all about image and lifestyle for some people.
5. Space - 32%: In the end, a car is useless if it won’t hold everything you need to carry - although it’s quite interesting that styling comes just above space…

*Source

So do any used car buyers care about emissions at all? The good news is that 26% of used car buyers rate emissions as important when choosing a vehicle.

The bad news is that this figure has fallen since 2006 - when 29% of people rated emissions as important!

Of course, this is only in the UK. To get some balance, let’s look at things in the USA.

Here, the latest J.D. Power study has found that only 11% of new car buyers - i.e. the ones with more money - are ‘very willing’ to pay more for an environmentally-friendly vehicle. Oh dear.

Despite people’s general concerns about greenhouse gases, it looks like helping the environment is going to have to wait until car makers can sell green cars and vans at the same prices as dirty ones, doesn’t it?

We all know that a huge proportion of our petrol and diesel costs are taken up by tax, but how many of you know exactly how much is tax?

I certainly don’t - that’s why I wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion by the FTA (Freight Transport Asssociation) that filling station operators should amend their receipts so that the cost of fuel is broken down into fuel cost, fuel duty and VAT.

This is already common practice with VAT - so why not fuel duty?

Fuel duty is currently a staggering 50.35p per litre - probably more than most people realise. I have to admit I thought it was “about 40p” - as did most other people I asked.

The FTA’s Director of External Affairs, Geoff Dossetter, provided a simple example to show just how this duty adds up:

“With fuel duty at 50.35p per litre and VAT at 17.5 per cent then the cost of a typical fill of 50 litres of fuel at £1.05 per litre works out at £52.50. This consists of £19.51 for the fuel, £25.17 for the fuel duty and £7.82 for the VAT.”

“So, for 50 litres at the pump, we are paying £19.51 for the fuel plus an eye-watering £32.99 in taxation. And now the Chancellor is looking for a further 2p per litre in April!”

The FTA believe that oil companies and filling station operators should make sure that the public understand just how much duty and tax they pay on fuel - especially as the government are planning a further 2p per litre rise in fuel duty in April, pushing fuel prices ever higher.