In some cases this has resulted in motorcyclists, who have held a motorbike licence for years, having to retake their tests in order get their entitlement back.

Motorcycling organisations are advising bike riders to photocopy their old licences before applying for renewals or replacements and to ensure that their new photo-identity licences contain the correct categories when returned by the DVLA.

Many riders passed their motorbike tests years ago and no longer have proof that they did so. Unless the DVLA can be convinced they have passed a test, they will be required to take a new one, even though the mistake was not of their own making.

The British Motorcyclists Federation has set up a page on its website warning of the problem. It states: “We strongly advise anyone about to send their licence to DVLA to photocopy it and any

supporting documents and check immediately upon receiving a licence that it retains formerly held motorcycle entitlement.”

Jeff Stone, press officer for the organisation, said: “There are 1.5 million motorcycle licence holders in the UK. We do not know the scale of the problem but we are aware that it has affected some of our members.

“As a result we have taken it up with the DVLA which has indicated the entitlement has been accidentally left off as the department tackled the problem of licence fraud.

“The DVLA has been helpful in the cases we have brought to its attention, but, at the end of the day, if a rider cannot prove he or she has passed a test, they will have to retake it.”

Despite evidence to the contrary, a DVLA spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest that motorcycle entitlement was being accidentally removed.

I am a claims investigator who deals mainly with road accidents, and was recently approached by friends about a motor insurance case. One of their teenage offspring had an accident in a car owned and insured by them. The driver was an occasional user of the vehicle and was correctly covered on the policy. The car was written off and removed by a well-known insurance company while the parent awaited settlement of the claim.

This is still outstanding, despite the passing of some months, and the insurer has instigated an investigation on the assumption that the parent had arranged insurance for the driver to reduce the premium. This is known in business as “fronting”. I am familiar with the usage of the vehicle and this assumption is incorrect. The investigator said the ���fronting” issue had come to light because the driver had previously approached insurers to see how much a policy would cost. This raises two points. First, it is common for newly qualified driver to think about buying their own car so they don’t have to rely on mum or dad. Part of the cost of owning a car responsibly is the insurance, a substantial sum for any young driver, so one would expect the youngster to check this figure when doing the sums. Second, since when do motor insurance underwriters share their personal data on prospective policyholders with claims handlers? Could you possibly raise this issue on your page and perhaps someone from the insurance industry would care to comment? if it is true that your insurer can check if you have been “shopping around” for quotes. I think we should be told:

G.D., via e-mail

By DAVID SAPSTED

SPEEDING was not a factor in any of the accidents cited to gain government approval for a new speed camera, it was revealed yesterday.

The disclosure heightened, suspicions that speed cameras are being driven by financial motives, but also caused concern among motoring organisations that the devices being used as an easy alternative to taking other measures at accident blackspots.

At the centre of the row is a new camera site on a busy stretch of dual carriageway on the A12 at Kelvedon, near Colchester. The Department of Transport gave approval last month after the Essex Safety Camera Partnership made an application on the ‘ grounds of five accidents in recent years An investigation by the East Anglian Daily Times -which, used the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to police records showed that none of the officers’ reports into the crashes listed “excess speed for conditions” as a factor.

Three of the accidents involved crashes with stationary vehicles and the forth, was a pedestrian who had taken drugs and alcohol and was hit by the wing mirror a passing lorry. In the fifth a man was seriously injured when he lost control of his car after a sweeping curve.

Edmund King, an executive director of the RAC Foundation, said the findings raised “major concerns”. He added: ���We are now seeing camera���s that are placed in location that have nothing to do with excess speed. Yet these partnerships and the police are putting all their eggs in one basket by concentrating on speed cameras and that does nothing to stop dangerous driving Andrew Howard, the head of road safety for the AA Motoring Trust, said: “Speed cameras can be defended because people are getting were injured and killed on the roads and something needs to be done about it. But it can be argued that speed cameras are becoming a bit of an easy option for the authorities. “They are much cheaper than putting an extra lane on a dual carriageway or introducing other measures like improved central barriers to make a road safer.” Essex police insisted yesterday that a follow-up survey had shown drivers regularly far exceeding the speed limit along that stretch of the A12. Kelly Fairweather, of the Essex Safety Camera Partnership -which comprises Essex police, the County Council and the Highways Agency ~ said the new camera would not be a fixed one, but one that operated at irregular intervals from a van on a bridge over the A12. She added: “This location has been approved as a camera site because it has a of very high speeding problem.” A spokesman for the DoT said: “We do not give permission for cameras to be sited in a particular place automatically. It has to be proved that there is a problem with accidents and also with speeding at a site. The rules do not state that an accident or fatal injury has occurred.

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Winter warnings

Snowdrops may be shoving their white heads, daffodils poking their leaves through the soil but it’s still winter, and that means taking extra care.

Make sure your tyres have plenty of tread and are the right pressure. Check that your wipers and lights work properly, and top up screen wash

Keep sunglasses handy -dazzle from winter sun can be dangerous .Manoeuvre gently and avoid sudden breaking or acceleration (it can take 10 times the distance to stop in ice and slush) .If you are planning a long journey, check the weather forecast and travel information

Don’t drive in snow unless you really have to, and take with you warm clothing, food, a torch and a spade in case you get stuck.

Drive slowly in fog; use dipped headlights and foglights -and don’t be fooled if it seems to be clearing. Fog drifts quickly and is often patchy.

With acknowledgements to the UK Department for Transport.

New roadside safety device will give ���ticking off��� to distracted drivers.

Drivers who flout laws on mobile phones will receive a public ���ticking off��� from new roadside safety devices in South Oxfordshire.

The County Council���s road safety team has joined forces with South Oxfordshire District Council to create a new radio controlled, portable variable message sign, to educate drivers about the dangers of speeding, using hand held mobile phones and not wearing seat belts. The battery powered machine, the first of its kind in the UK, will be operated by someone using a remote control handset.

If he or she spots a driver not wearing a seatbelt, the waist height sign will be activated and the message ���seat belt��� will pop up in its display, giving a sharp reminder to the motorist in question.

Eight other messages including ���mobile phone���, and ���slow down!��� will also be programmed into the machine.

���It will be like a little tap on the wrist saying ���naughty���, but in a nice way.��� Said Steve Wood, County Safer Roads Officer.

���Driver education is a very important part of our road safety work and this has been proved by the success of our speed indicator displays,��� he added, ���Although there has been a fall in the number of people being killed and injured on South Oxfordshire���s roads, the number of complaints about speeding vehicles and people driving irresponsibly continues to rise.���

���Speeding remains peoples biggest fear��� said Mr Wood. ��� We are still losing three people a week on the Thames Valley���s roads.��� Mr Wood drew up the specification for the new machine and South Oxfordshire District Council���s Community Safety Group agreed to fund it.

He added:��� It has taken 12 months for us to find a suitable company to make us the machine and whilst it will only be used on South Oxfordshire���s roads to start with, we hope other districts will soon come on board.��� While the machine will only serve as a warning to drivers behaving in a distracted manner, the council may eventually liaise with the police to stop offenders.

The machine was launched at the Traffex 2005 show at the National Exhibition centre, Birmingham, this week and is expected to be in operation in the next few weeks.

Here are 10 ways to improve fuel consumption.

1. Slow down – driving at the speed limit, rather than 5-10mph over it, can make a significant difference.

2. Slow gradually for red lights, which could allow the light to turn green before you reach it. Pulling away from a dead stop uses more fuel than accelerating while in motion.

3. Check tyre pressures regularly, keeping tyres properly inflated will help improve consumption. For better economy still, some people exceed the recommended pressure slightly, but be sure to keep belowthe maximum indicated on the tyre’s sidewall. Check pressures whilst CQLD or you might get a falsely high reading.

4. Avoid abrupt acceleration.

5. Link several short trips together, starting with the longest. This helps to keep the car at peak operating temperature.

6. In winter, don’t let your car idle for long periods. It might be nice to have your car’s interior temperature at the “perfect” setting the moment you step in, but unnecessary idling means zero miles per gallon.

7. Keep your car properly maintained -blocked air.filters, dirty oil and lack of attention to other maintenance items all reduce economy.

8. Calculate your petrol use regularly. By being more aware of your car’s economy; you are more likely to make changes. Sometimes this might mean changing your driving habits -or your car.

9. Purchase a fuel consumption gauge, which can help you see, in real time, how your driving style affects fuel consumption.

10. Cut back on air-conditioning. Most air-con compressors run off of pulleys attached to the motor. This creates drag, which makes the engine work harder. At low speeds, roll down your windows and enjoy fresh air (at motorway speeds open windows create more drag than air-con does). Oh, and never drive with a luggage rack or top box if you are not using it.

P.M Hendon

It would be interesting to know what results readers obtain if they put all this into practice

Last July we spent a week in Holland at the wheel of a 2.0 Ford Mondeo diesel estate and filled up prior to our return. Being slightly confused by the fuel lines, I inadvertently used the unleaded nozzle. Fortunately only two litres went in and I immediately added a Further38 litres of diesel A further top-up in Calais got us home with no problem. The car has been fine ever since, returning 43-45mpg.

H.R., Churchdown

There must have been plenty of lubricity in the diesel to let you get away with it. If there wasn’t, the pump would have suffered severe Wear and the resultant swarf would have damaged the injectors. You’ve been lucky. Incidentally, Ford plans to introduce a sort of chastity-belt device for diesel fuel necks to stop unleaded nozzles being used.

Will the problem of monitoring speed at the wheel always be with us? One of the big difficulties is that the driver must keep his eyes on the road, but the speedometer dial is usually out of his line of sight. if the driver is to watch his speed then his eyes must change focus from distant objects and be distracted from the traffic environment. Keeping an eye on road speed automatically creates a traffic hazard. An effective solution would be to have a speed read-out within the driver’s line of vision, Perhaps adjacent to the windshield pillar. if a GPS system can be smart enough to determine speed and to sound an alarm if a car exceeds the prevailing limit, indicating road speed on a digital display ought to be easy. It would save points on a lot of driving licences.

D.T., Walkinqton

The Toyota Prius already has a digital speed read-out at the base of its windscreen, while the BMW 5-series and Citroen C6 can have optional head-up displays projected on to the glass. Some UK-market Cadillacs and the Corvette C6-fiave this as standard. Once you have driven a car with a head-up display, you never look down at the instruments. Also, anyone can buy a Cyclops that gives true speed by GPS far more accurately than any speedometer and can be positioned in your line of sight.

A ��60,000 traffic-calming scheme being installed in west Oxfordshire is an “accident waiting to happen”, according to a driving safety spokesman. Driver, motorcyclist and cyclist Mark McArthur-Christie said triangular concrete blocks, which will create a one-way system at Bampton’s four main entrances, posed a risk to all road users. So far, the 20 centimetre-high blocks known as village gateways have only been fitted on Station Lane, going out of Bampton towards Witney, but Mr McArthur-Christie, who is a driver, motorcyclist and cyclist, said lives were already being put at risk.Oxfordshire County Council said it had consulted expert engineers before commissioning the ��60,000 work on behalf of Bampton Parish Council and it was confident the scheme would work as planned. But Mr McArthur-Christie, who lives in Bampton and is safety spokesman for the Institute of Advanced Drivers and represents the Association of British Drivers, said: “From the Witney and Brize Norton road, there is a sharp corner entering Bampton. “These blocks are causing traffic to queue and all it needs is for four to five cars to be queuing back and for a driver to come around the corner, where it’s a 40mph zone, and smash straight into the back of them. “I was cycling out of Bampton the other day and was almost knocked off my bike by a driver by these blocks, because there’s not enough room any more for both a car and cycle. It’s an accident waiting to happen.” Mr McArthur-Christie, 38, who cycles daily to West End, Witney, where he runs a communications company, agreed action needed to be taken to prevent speeding motorists, but said: “This is just Neanderthal. It is just a traffic-calming disaster from the dark ages.” He suggested new methods of traffic calming, used elsewhere in Europe, to “merge” pavements and roads to bring all road users together, so drivers had no choice but to slow down. “There are so many modern alternatives, the lack of thought that has gone into this is really disappointing,” he added. Parish council chairman David Hawkins said he was aware there were concerns about the new scheme, but he was sure it would have a positive effect once finished. He said: “The problem is that we thought this would be finished much sooner, during the winter. Because it’s half finished people have not had a chance to see it working properly and have jumped to the wrong conclusions. “We have entrusted the county council to use its expertise to come up with the best possible scheme. I’m sure after a fortnight or couple of months people will have got used to it and it will help to slow the speeds.” Mike Collins, the county council’s principal engineer, said he was aware of potential problems approaching the village and extra signs were being put up warning motorists of possible queues ahead. He said: “We decided to use this method on the advice of our engineering consultants, Jacobs Babtie, who have considerable experience in the type of scheme most suited to this type of road. Local people and other interested parties, including the local cyclists’ touring club, were consulted and no major concerns were raised.”

A – If your GPS locator failed to warn you of a fixed camera site (and provided it was up to date) we would assume you have been caught by a mobile speed gun operated by the police. ! According to a recent BBC investigation, the most commonly used laser speed gun, the LTI 20.20, may result in inaccurate speed readings if officers move even slightly while operating the device. So you may be right to doubt the reading, although the AA Motoring Trust warns: “Inaccurate readings happen increasingly rarely and many motorists can break the speed limit on familiar roads without realising.” How easy it is to get hold of photographs and documentation to support your argument varies from force to force. Some police forces and safety camera partnerships will produce documents on request and

may drop the fine if the motorist can , then prove the penalty charge was given in error. But they are not legally obliged to produce any evidence unless the driver decides to challenge the fine in court. This, of course, isa risky business and could end up costing you a. great deal more than the original £60 fine and three points on your licence Рanything up to £1,000 (or £2,500 if the offence took place on a motorway) and six points on your licence if you are found guilty .

Even if you win your case and the fine is dropped there is no guarantee you will have your legal costs reimbursed. We suggest you consult a solicitor before pursuing your case and visit www.pepipoo.com, which offers legal advice aimed at drivers.