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RAC has been voted best in the Accident Management category of the annual Business Car Awards. The Awards cover many categories but the area of high interest to Fleet Managers in accident management as it caters for a whole area of grey financial losses involved if a fleet user suffers a car accident. RAC’s offering in this field augments the Norwich Union car insurance cover, all part of the Aviva group of companies.

The RAC has realigned its internal structure to place its legal team alongside accident management to produce a cohesive unit that can deal with a range of potential losses that fleet users face following an accident.

Their offering includes the recovery of out of pocket expenses such as insurance excesses, the replacement or repair of damage to property and insurance as well as negotiations regarding hire cars, personal injury and loss of staff time, all of which are recoverable. They have put together a support package to ease the time and cost burdens from the time of an accident, through roadside recovery and continued mobility of the staff member to the return of the fixed vehicle and recovery of all financial losses.

A spokesman for the RAC said that it was particularly encouraging because this award is voted for by the end-user of of the service who are the focus of the company’s efforts, and it demonstrates that serving the person behind the wheel is really appreciated by drivers in a time of potentially high stress and inconvenience.

One thing your car insurance certainly won’t cover is fines incurred for illegal parking. Statutory instruments under the Traffic Management Act 2004 come into effect with regard to parking from April 1st this year which make several changes to the administration and the level of potential fines. From 1st April all new parking tickets have to be written quoting the above act rather than the 1991 Road Traffic Act which was the previous enabling legislation.

The main changes include:
A name change for the friendly Traffic Warden who will become Civil enforcement Officers. Penalty notices will be permitted to be sent by post to the owner if the notice has been started but not completed, e.g. in the case of drive-offs, where the notice was not previously deemed served because it had not been affixed to the windscreen. There will be two levels to the fine, one for lesser offences such as returning only a few minutes late at a parking meter and another for serious offences such as parking on a ‘double yellow’. There are new offences of parking beside a dropped kerb and double parking will include parking more than half a metre from the kerb. Also if a vehicle is clamped, then this cannot be done before half an hour after the offence was noticed and a penalty issued.

The new levels of fine will be £70 for serious offences and £35 for lesser offences outside London but within London there will be three zones with a maximum cost of £120 for serious and £80 for lesser offences.

The AA gives the changes a general thumbs-up, in that the government appears to be reacting to the idea of minor misdemeanours with lower fines for these, but says that they will retain a watching brief on activities like the use of postal penalty notices, which could enforcement officers encouraged quickly passing down streets noting and photographing illegally parked vehicles and issuing the notices later by post as a revenue earner rather than as a more traditional parking deterrent.

The general advice must always remain, if you don’t want a parking fine, don’t park illegally.

It’s a time of year for people to feel a little ‘stretched’ after the Christmas and New Year period and the same old resolutions are trotted out; must get rid of this paunch, must loose that stone (or two), my clothes have all got too tight must go down a size. This leads in a large number of people to ill-considered yo-yo dieting, missing meals and altogether irregular and inadequate eating habits. This poor diet can add to the problem of driver fatigue and concentration.

On the good side try to incorporate a breakfast that will set you up for the morning commute and you see you through to lunch, a low GI, iron rich cereal or sardines on toast which will help instil the awareness required for safe driving. If you don’t want to become one of the 300 drivers a year that die as a result of falling asleep at the wheel or cause one of the 7 road fatalities a week due to tiredness, think before you go on that drastic diet.

With the winter season upon us we have been reminded of how to stay safe and avoid prangs and claims on our car insurance by Dave Goudie, and they don’t come much better as he is a Police Driving Instructor highly qualified in teaching North Yorkshire’s policemen to drive safely in all weathers. The winter driving tips from his New Year press release include:

Safety is always first. In icy and snowy conditions consider if the journey is really necessary and if not, don’t go, that’s ultimate safety. If you do have to venture out on the icy roads then think ahead, prepare yourself and your car for the conditions you are about to encounter. It’s a good move to start your engine and leave it running a while to warm the engine and the interior of the car, including the windows before moving off.

Make sure you can see clearly through all windows before you move off, the warm up mentioned above help keep the windows clear after de-icing. Ensure your screen washer bottle has the appropriate strength deicer fluid and is full up when you start, and that your wiper blades are ice-free and in good condition. Ensure your tyres have adequate tread and are at the right pressure, the deeper the tread the better the grip on snow. Ensure your lights are clean and all are working, it’s amazing how headlight effectiveness can be affected by accumulated winter road spray, and remember not to use fog lamps unless visibility falls below 100 metres (otherwise they can cause dangerous dazzle and it’s illegal!)

As for driving in these inclement conditions Mr Goudie strongly advises smooth, cautious and gentle driving techniques, by gentle acceleration, cornering and braking. Read the road well ahead and try to anticipate the actions of other road users well in advance. Increase the braking gap between you and the next vehicle, as if the the road hasn’t been treated (even where it has) and on approaching a hazard be sure to reach it at an appropriate speed so that you can break if necessary and remember that road conditions can alter in a very short distance due to local climate, the sun and the unevenness of road treatments etc.

Lastly never be induced to hurry, no matter how late you may be, it’s always better late than never!

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