Leasedrive Velo Blog

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

‘Crash for cash’ appears to be hitting the headlines big time. The despicable practice of fraudsters deliberately making emergency stops at road junctions, slip roads and roundabouts to cause a deliberate accident is apparently on the increase, and it’s adding an average £44 on insurance premiums. Fleet cars are a prime target.

Interestingly, we had just written in our quarterly company car driver e-newsletter about an operation being run by the Metropolitan Police to catch criminal gangs preying on company car drivers by deliberately causing accidents in order to defraud their employer’s insurers.

Under the grand title of Operation Catcher, the Met is endeavouring to reduce the number of such offences by identifying when they happen and bringing the culprits to justice.

In the London area, the sting has a familiar pattern and is a subtle twist on the more traditional version of one car making an emergency stop and the driver then making fraudulent claims for fictitious injuries. This one involves the use of two cars.

The first car brakes suddenly or swerves to make the second stop, which gets hit from behind by the unsuspecting company car driver. Usually, the driver of the second car uses the handbrake to avoid alerting the company car driver of what is happening. While the first car makes off the driver of the second car starts ranting on about the actions of the first, so drawing some sympathy from the company car driver and distracting them from possibly thinking they have become the victim of a fraudulent sting.

Such practices, subtle and unsubtle, apparently are costing the British insurance industry some £350m per year, adding to the cost of vehicle insurance premiums and also delay the resolution of claims at known hot spots as further investigations are required.

The insurance industry has become so wise to the sharp practice that not only do they publish a list of the top towns and cities affected but can specifically highlight known stretches of roads. For information, be extra vigilant at Centenary Way, Trafford Park, Manchester; Harlingen roundabout off Junction 5 of the M65 and the Scotland Road roundabout off Junction 13 of the M65. These are the top three ‘crash for cash’ hot spots according to Direct Line.

In the last year, the number of ‘crash for cash’ fraudulent claims has risen by 30 per cent according to Keoghs, which investigates fraudulent claims on behalf of the British insurance industry.

Fleet vehicles are particular targets as company fleet policies are seen as easier prey.

‘Crash for cash’ is another headache for fleets and can add further costs to fleet operations as well as a potential requirement for additional driver training.

Never has ‘keep a safe distance from the vehicle in front’ been more applicable!

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

First, we had leaves on the line. Now, we have ash in the sky! The genuine but bizarre excuses multiply at the expense of every one. If ever there was a need for a fully integrated transport policy then this was it!

With a quarter of goods air-freighted into the country, it’s not just the airlines, tour operators and hotels who are suffering from the business community. From flower growers to fruit and vegetable producers the world over, the small producers are suffering too. We’ve grown used to being able to purchase seasonal produce all year round. If it’s not grown here at one time of the year, it is somewhere else so we are able to feed our indulgences. Times may be about to change, certainly in the short-term.

While Eyjafjallajokull has been creating unprecedented chaos in the skies over Europe and Scandinavia, the worst may be yet to come. While Canada is the next major country to suffer the fall-out, a sister volcano – Katla – is predicted to erupt in the coming months. Each time the first has erupted, the second has followed suit within six months. And we are talking here about records going back some two thousand years! 1918 was the last time Katla erupted and it does so each century.

Katla is ten times bigger than Eyjafjallajokull and has a much bigger ice cap. It’s the combination of melting cold water and lava that’s causing the explosions and shooting ash to high altitude. You only have to have the wind in the wrong direction and no-fly zones become the inevitable consequence.

According to a reliable engineering source, one empty airliner that was taken up on a test flight to prove things were OK returned to the ground without drama. The pilot declared that he didn’t know what all the fuss was about. When the engineers examined the internals of his jet engines, they declared he had returned just in time. They were covered in a thick layer of a tarry substance and were on the point of seizing!

One hundred thousand flights have been cancelled so far and the potential havoc to come just does not bear considering, but consider it we all should.

Perhaps this is the wake-up call we’ve all been waiting for as a result of all our excesses – whether it’s flying to New York for the weekend or buying tulips from Kenya in December from our local supermarket.

Already, as a result of the costs of transportation and the impact to the environment, there has been much talk of some manufacturing moving back from the Far East to the UK. Is this the catalyst for change together with a more critical look at the merits of business travel?

Perhaps more indeed will be accomplished at home, here in the UK, and that will place an even greater focus on a fully integrated transport system. For certain, if we start enduring regular disruptions to air travel as a result of exploding volcanoes in Iceland, then more people will turn to the train to take the strain. Governments with foresight will look at creating major rail hubs in the same way that regional air hubs have been developed. Passengers will drive or ride to those hubs by personal transport and the first steps to a truly integrated transport system will begin to emerge.

Tall transport visions from little volcanoes grow!

Roddy Graham, Commercial Director

I never ever thought I would write about a declining UK vehicle parc but the fact is that the number of cars on our UK roads has dropped for the first time in 64 years.

According to the SMMT, this is the first year-on-year decline since the Second World War and the first peacetime decline since vehicle records began in 1904.

The UK car parc at the end of 2009 was 31,035,791 cars, representing a 0.7 per cent decline over 2008.

Most commentators attribute the decline to the recession but the recently closed scrappage incentive scheme (SIS) has played its part too. Plenty of cars, ten years and older, that would otherwise still be chugging around polluting our environment, have been cleared off our roads.

In fact, a total of 372,401 new cars were registered under SIS, accounting for 18.7 per cent of total new car sales during the time it ran between May 2009 and March 2010. The SMMT analysis shows that the average CO2 emissions of vehicles bought under the scheme were 132.9g/km, 27.1 per cent below the average of the vehicles scrapped – estimated to be 182.2g/km.

So the SIS, as well as kick-starting the new car market, did what it said on the tin and removed some high polluting vehicles off our roads. Indeed SIS was so successful in that regard that the CO2 average was even 9.6 per cent lower than the new car market average.

While the UK vehicle parc will no doubt rise again by the end of the year, the fact is that the percentage increases in recent years were getting lower and lower and, with prices at the pumps now at an all-time high, the cost of motoring will undoubtedly come into sharper focus with a direct impact on the number and types of vehicle being operated.

Looking to the future, it was interesting to learn this week that scientists had made a breakthrough in attempts to replicate photosynthesis leading to the prospect of generating unlimited amounts of green energy from water and sunlight.

Genetically modified viruses have apparently been successfully assembled into wire-like structures that are able to use the energy of the sun to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. On a mass scale, there is the potential prospect of unlimited production of hydrogen fuel, a clean source of energy for vehicles.

As electric vehicles come on stream over the coming years, hybrid vehicles become more popular and potential developments in harnessing hydrogen, the reality of alternative-fuelled vehicles will lead to a dramatic change in the size and make-up of the UK vehicle parc.