It was reported in the Telegraph recently that the University of Leeds has found that eating and drinking whilst driving, causes motorists to have significantly slower reactions; 44% slower when eating at the wheel and 22% slower when drinking, lane control also deteriorated. They compared it with motorists using their phone who are 37.4 slower to react and with alcohol 12.5%. This of course depends very much on the level of alcohol someone has in their system; if you are paralytic your reaction time is not going to be reduced by 12.5%.

These results prompted them to headline the article; eating at the wheel is more dangerous than drink driving. But is it? Someone can eat and drink at the wheel responsibly, whereas the level of alcohol in somebody’s system is not going to change, however they try to drive; all they can do is drive slower but you can easily kill a child at 30mph. 

Obviously if you are going to start unwrapping a sandwich whilst driving and perhaps checking the packaging for the fat content, it is going to be extremely dangerous but not everybody does that and some people do drink from a can but don’t look away from the road whilst doing so. It is true that they only have one hand on the wheel but so many people drive with just one hand on the wheel anyway.

In the Telegraph article they said that eating, drinking and smoking while driving are not illegal. That is not strictly true; there are now smoke-free laws, which state that a vehicle must be smoke free, if it is used to transport members of the public or if a vehicle is used in the course paid or even voluntary work by more than one person, even if they are not in the vehicle at the same time. So for example it is illegal to smoke in a company pool car.

A lot of work has been done to make drink driving socially unacceptable, on the whole it has worked particularly with the younger generation and it really doesn’t help to send out a message that could be read as “Don’t worry about drink driving; you’re safer than those who eat a sandwich or drink a Coke  at the wheel. Not a message that would be appreciated by those who have lost a child to a hit and run drunk driver. 

Soon you will be able to lease a Peugeot RCZ with paintwork that changes colour depending on your mood; controlled by heat sensors built into the steering wheel. This is achieved with a special coating to the exterior of the car, which emits light at varying wavelengths changing the molecular structure. In a demonstration the Peugeot RCZ changed in colour, to yellow when uplifting music was played in the car and to black when more sombre music was on the radio. Apparently it changes to red if emotions are high.

When this option becomes available will it increase our Peugeot RCZ contract hire sales? Probably not, some might be attracted by the novelty factor but the fact is that the demand from those who want to lease a Peugeot RCZ is very strong already and with every justification; it’s a beautiful car. Also what is the point of the car changing colour with your mood? You will be inside the car so you won’t see it anyway, unless of course there is a manual override in which case you can have a different colour car for various days of the week; Monday morning’s choice would presumably be black.

So what could be the advantages of this quite extraordinary invention? Well we will certainly be able to see road rage coming, although of course the car may have been red already.  It does make one wonder what the police are going to make of all this, if this technology becomes generally available; it is going to make their job more difficult.

Would criminals in an emotional state after carrying out a robbery, turn the car red? Perhaps assisted by some calming music and an ice pack on the steering wheel could turn it black and foil their pursuers. It could realistically make finding a car that had been involved in an incident a lot more difficult for the police and perhaps render eye witness statements in accidents, virtually useless.

What would Henry Ford, who famously said, “Any customer can have a car painted in any colour he wants so long as it’s black”, make of all this? In the meantime if you would like to acquire the excellent RCZ without mood changing paint, there are some excellent Peugeot leasing deals available; Peugeot RCZ leasing costs are extremely economical. This is the car to lease if you want something different and exciting, it also has very good fuel economy; a combined cycle of 44 mpg. Naturally it has a Euro NCAP five star safety rating. You can lease a Peugeot RCZ for just £249 plus vat per month. You won’t be disappointed. 

Taxes now account for 60% of the cost of a litre of unleaded fuel and 58% of diesel, which means that we pay the highest fuel duty in the European Union. Only Italy has duty approaching the level of the UK, where they pay 53% tax on a litre of diesel. In France they pay 47% and Germany 48%. Those living in Luxembourg pay just 38%.

So where does all the money go? Certainly not on repairing our roads, which have potholes in size and number similar to many third world countries; they are now so bad that Hyundai have built a special section of road at their plant, to duplicate British road conditions.

The mid-January price for diesel was 141.3p but without the duty would have been just 59.8p. The government is raising £27 billion per annum in fuel duty. With petrol now 20p more expensive than the average price in the EU, motorists are inevitably beginning to question this; why do we have to pay so much more than other countries and still seem to have the worst roads?

 There is now growing concern over the issue of fuel costs even amongst Tory MP’s, because virtually everything we buy in this country travels by road, so it is pushing up the cost of products.

If you take into account fuel duty, road fund licence, local council parking charges, speed cameras sited - and collecting vast sums - in areas where there is no danger, it is hardly surprising that many motorists are considering giving up driving. This will result in the government collecting less fuel duty, what will they do then? Probably put it up.

Honda Cr-v contract hire offers excellent value for money, especially when you compare it with its main competitors, which are the Volvo XC60 , the Toyota Rav 4 and the BMW X1 . Honda Cr-v leasing is very popular with those who have a family as it has lots of storage space, it also has the advantage of providing plenty of room for rear passengers; even large adults. 

The Cr-v is a pleasure to drive and deals well with both town and motorway road conditions, it’s also a very capable off roader, although many of those who drive the Cr-v never go off road. The fuel economy is good; it has a combined cycle of 43.5 mpg. As is the case with most of the Honda range the Cr-v has excellent residual values, which helps to keep the cost of leasing a Honda Cr-v low; when a contract hire company calculates the cost of leasing a particular vehicle, the car’s residual value  – what then car can be sold for at the end of the contract hire term -   is a crucial factor.

 This is a great looking vehicle and one of the toughest and highest quality SUV’s around. You can lease a Honda Cr-v for just £307 plus Vat per month. We have over twenty five different Cr-v models to choose from.  

In 2011 the Ford Modeo 1.6 TDCIi Eco Zetec won the award of the Greenest Family Car of 2011. Our Ford Mondeo contract hire sales have remained strong ever since the current version was released, although we suspect not as strong as they could have been if they had given the model a different name. This is an excellent vehicle which bears no resemblance to the previous Mondeo model; so what made Ford call it a Mondeo? The earlier Mondeo model was known as a rep’s car, something you drove because that is what the company you worked for supplied and you had no choice in the matter. 

Frequently we try to convince our car leasing clients that leasing a Ford Mondeo gives you one of the best value for money cars on the market; after all you can lease a Ford Mondeo for just £229 plus vat per month. It’s an excellent proposition; a large elegant and stylish vehicle which is safe and economical and yet a not uncommon response is, “Oh no not a Mondeo”, because of the association with the previous model. 

The Mondeo quite deservedly won its award; the 1.6 TDCi has emissions of just 114g/km and an amazing combined fuel cycle of 65.6mpg. As you would expect it has a Euro NCAP five star safety rating. Overall it’s very difficult to fault this car, if you choose to lease a Ford Mondeo, you won’t be disappointed.

Toyota have been up to no good according to a number of our Toyota contract hire clients and this seemed to be confirmed in a Sunday Times Insight report last month. When you lease a Toyota for say a three year period you are secure in the knowledge that if there is anything wrong with the car this will automatically be fixed under warranty, when the car is being serviced, right? Apparently not; we started to get reports from our Toyota leasing clients that their cars had gone in for service with faults and been returned to them with the same faults, so what is going on?

Apparently their mistake was not to point out these faults to the servicing department. They say that some of the faults were so obvious that there seemed little point in making the service department aware of them. Of course they could not have been aware that - according to the Sunday Times Insight team - Toyota has specifically instructed their dealer network not to rectify faults under the warranty, unless they have been asked to do so by the client, or if it was a safety issue.

 If this is true, how did Toyota think they were going to get away with this? If we as a contract hire company were hearing this form our Toyota leasing clients it wasn’t going to be long before it got into the press and that is what has happened. Toyota is the world’s biggest car manufacturer, expected to make £1.5 billion profit this year; in the UK alone they registered 70,000 cars last year. They are hardly on the breadline so why would they decide to risk damaging their reputation in this way? There is no doubt they will be damaged by these revelations. 

The Sunday Times insight team say they have seen an internal documents and a confidential manual, which is only given to dealers, it instructs them to only deal with issues that relate to safety and reliability, so if the problem relates to the clutch or something like corroded alloys, the dealers were instructed to ignore it. They interviewed former dealers and technicians who were very unhappy with this policy.

So who has lost out as a result of Toyota ’s actions? maybe those who have bought Toyota ’s that are currently under warranty and the dealers who are not carrying out work which would normally be charged to Toyota but most of all Toyota themselves; they will inevitably lose sales as a result of this recent revelation. Will we stop recommending Toyota contract hire in favour of another manufacturer? No because Toyota is an excellent brand and Toyota leasing, due to good residual values, is very reasonably priced. Furthermore in a statement issued by Toyota on 5 February 2012, they completely refute the accusations made in the Sunday Times, also to their credit, there is no suggestion that they ignored safety issues.

In a survey carried out by a community website called Kaggle, they found that second-hand yellow cars were most likely to be defective. That’s hardly surprising as they probably date back to when yellow cars were last popular; the 1970’s. We as a car leasing company can’t remember the last time we leased a yellow car, indeed many contract hire companies until recently had a policy of only allowing clients to choose certain colours, and some companies still do; Imagine how desirable a Mercedes SL contract hire car, in orange, would be when it went through the auctions at the end of its car leasing term.  

Apparently according to the survey the safest car is orange. This survey seems to say more about how weird some people’s tastes in colours are, rather than road safety. We are also told that cars with racing seats and sports suspension were more risky to buy but would any right minded person buy a souped up car from a boy racer? A teenager might but you would hope that their parents would stop them. They also said older cars were more risky; this survey excels in stating the obvious.

The Institute of Advanced Motorists’ advice to parents of newly qualified drivers is to try and help them buy the latest car possible.  Parents could do a lot worse than buying, or helping their son or daughter to buy, an ex-contract hire car at the end of its leasing term; it will have been regularly serviced and maintained and the chances of it having a major fault are small. Later cars also have far more safety equipment than older cars.

It’s difficult to know were the researcers found sufficient yellow cars to give them a large enough sample, in order to come to the conclusion that yellow cars and therefore presumably their owner are unreliable but there must be exceptions; after all Del Trotter’s Reliant Robin was yellow, he was reliable and his van looked to be in good condition too. The bizarre conclusions of this survey became easier to understand on learning that it was carried out worldwide, probably including Africa, South America and places like Romania; were they still saw cars in half and use the back half as a horse drawn carriage. 

If you are considering a car for your son or daughter who has recently passed the driving test, perhaps it would be worth avoiding yellow, although bear in mind it is still considered the safest colour in terms of being seen by other road users. If you are planning on buying them a later ex lease car which is likely to be much safer than buying an old car, you can check out the vehicle’s Euro NCAP safety rating on our website.

The new advanced driving assistance systems and the brilliantly efficient engine of this vehicle makes Volkswagen Passat contract hire one of the most popular choices for companies. Available in petrol and diesel variants, the Passat Saloon ranges in price from £ 19,290 to £ 24,855.  The Passat Estate and Passat CC versions cost a little more.

The showroom price of the very impressive Passat CC GT V6 version is £34,360. But driving a Passat doesn’t need to involve a large capital outlay and nowadays very few companies are prepared to put their capital into company cars; a far more economical way of acquiring this vehicle is to opt for Volkswagen Passat leasing  instead of outright purchase. 

The biggest advantage when leasing a Volkswagen Passat is that you do not have to worry about depreciation. Car ownership always results in dwindling equity but a car lease lets you enjoy the use of your favourite car in its prime and allows you to just hand it back at the end of the term.

Volkswagen Passat contract hire or lease payments cover only the portion of the vehicle's value which you use during the time you drive it and not its entire cost. However, when you purchase a car with a loan, you are responsible for paying its total cost, plus the loan interest charges and the entire sales tax as applicable; this results in higher payments for hire purchase, even if you obtain a long term loan. This is why leasing Volkswagen Passat is a much more practical alternative. 

You can drive a Volkswagen Passat lease car for 2 to 4 years and at the end of lease period just give it back and take delivery of you new car. Check our special offers for the best deals on Volkswagen Passat contract hire rates. 

It is not a good idea to change the current MOT system according to a consortium of twenty nine safety organisations, motoring, transport groups and retailers. The proposal is that the first MOT test will be at four years rather than three and then every other year, it is however being claimed by these groups that it will be detrimental to the motorist rather than provide a benefit and additionally increase carbon emissions.

It is said that running costs will increase and road deaths will also increase. The fact that road deaths will increase is perfectly obvious; you only have to consider when, a not insignificant number of motorists, change a damaged tyre or replace their worn brakes, which is when the MOT is due. If the MOT is due in one month that is when many motorists will attend to the necessary work to get through the MOT, if it is due in thirteen months a proportion will wait another twelve months. In fact there is evidence that many motorists don’t even look at their tyres until the annual MOT is coming up.

The government has been presented with all the evidence from the experts as to why it’s not a good idea but they still seem to be pressing ahead, why is  that? The government say it is bring Britain in line with Europe. Of course it had to be something to do with Europe, as is most of our legislation that doesn’t make any sense.

The number of additional road deaths and injuries is being estimated by these organisations at 3,000 per annum, increasing insurance premiums to all motorists. It is also being claimed that it could cost up to 40,000 jobs. Clearly some of these groups have a vested interest in the law not changing because they believe they will sell less tyres and brakes. It is not however in our interests for them to be selling less tyres and brakes; it simply means that some of those who need stop in time, perhaps before running over a child, will not always do so.

The Americans have always said “If it aint broke, don’t fix it” The governments of today always seem to be ready to change something that is working perfectly well, just for the sake of it.

Volkswagen Eos contract hire is very popular and is favoured by those who prefer driving a practical and safe vehicle. The electro mechanical steering system,  A excellent 6 speed DSG transmission with Tiptronic, a smooth2 litre TSI engine and FSI direct injection technology are some of the features that make it one of the best cars in its segment, with Volkswagen Eos leasing you have the added benefit that there is no reason to worry about depreciation, because at the end of car lease, you can return it and lease another new vehicle. 

A big advantage when leasing a Volkswagen Eos is the low running and maintenance costs; the Eos 1.4 TSI  Bluemotion has a combined fuel cycle of 45.6 mpg and it’s safe, with a Euro NCAP five star safety rating. Additionally, the monthly payments for a Volkswagen Eos contract hire are typically lower than a car loan; starting at just £340 plus Vat per month.  

There is plenty of room in this car compared with its competitors and the interior has a real quality feel about. Admittedly it is rather more pricy than some of the other cars in this segment but it’s a Volkswagen so it has more style and class. You won’t be disappointed if you choose lease a Volkswagen Eos .