Insurance Talks!

If you love to travel and sample the local delicacies then make sure you abide by this list to ensure you don’t get accidently poisoned.

In the Mediterranean a delicacy is the Silverstripe Blaasop, a fish that is o.k. to eat as long as the toxic liver, skin and organs are removed. This is regarded as a high fatality food and is illegal in most western countries due to the difficulty in successfully removing the harmful bits.

Escamoles, Mexico – these look like chickpeas and smell buttery, but they are the larvae of ants and served in guacamole or salsa. It’s not dangerous to eat them but to harvest them and the harvester will normally find themselves attacked by dangerous ants.

Absinthe, world wide – this popular drink has been blamed for blindness and hallucinations, and it is derived from the woodworm, sweet fennel and sweet anise. The alcohol can make you really ill, but it luckily widely banned across the western world.

Ackee, Jamaica – this fruit is reminiscent of a pear and is red or orange. It has to be picked just at the right time or you will have a fatal dose of toxins in your body. It hampers the body’s sugar production and causes low blood sugars, yet is still the staple of the Jamaican diet.

Casu Marzu, Italy- this cheese is supposed to be quite safe if the maggots have died off, but seeing as it is made by leaving the cheese out to ripen and encouraging flies to lay eggs on it, you can’t really be sure. When the flies hatch the maggots suck the fat out of the cheese and then, once dead, it is seen as a delicacy. Luckily due to EU regulations it can now be made without the presence of maggots, buts its still pretty horrible.

The Fugu blowfish, Japan – the Japanese puffer fish is a famous delicacy as the toxins can paralyse you, but luckily the chefs require a licence to cook it so you can ensure that it is made correctly.

If you are planning on travelling to any of these countries and sampling the delicacies then make sure you have Holiday Insurance in case of the need to visit a hospital.

Litter is something that ruins the look of the country and makes it look dirty and untidy. But people insist on dropping their rubbish and contributing to the ever increasing problem. People throw their litter from their vehicles out of their cars to keep them tidy, and in the process are damaging the environment, so it comes as great news that the government are imposing an eighty pound fine on any car owner who has litter thrown from their car, regardless of whether it was you or your passenger.

It means that drivers will become far more responsible for what is going on around them or face a hefty fine for something that wasn’t necessarily them. It will be policed by council officers who will take down the registration numbers of people that they catch littering; and then the penalty will then be sent to the owner of the vehicle in question. Evidence will also be collected from CCTV cameras to ensure that people are not flouting the new regulations.

This change has been in the pipeline for years, as environmental campaigners feel that drivers should be responsible for littering, but it has taken this long to implement. The planned change will make the car owner liable unless they are willing to name and shame the culprit, or there is evidence to prove that it was the passenger. The current law means that police can prosecute drivers for littering, but there has to be proof that it was the driver, which means that offenders have a legal loophole.

More than two million items of litter are dropped from moving vehicles on a daily basis across the country, and a fifth of people admit to throwing litter from their cars, including cigarette butts and crisp packets.

The study, conducted by Keep Britain Tidy found that the most likely offenders wee men under thirty five, especially if they were smokers. Cigarette butts are unsightly and disgusting, and this needs to be stopped.

The act has previously not been processed as the government feared a backlash from motorists.

If you are driving on the roads in the UK then go online for Car Insurance

On those cold mornings in the UK we cannot be blamed for wishing that we had heated car seats, or a car where the windscreens didn’t freeze over.

But specialists from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are warning that actually they are not such a great idea. They are currently investigating allegations that some heated car seats have been responsible for burning passengers, some because the seat heaters are faulty, and others because the heaters are being used by people who have little feeling in their lower extremities and therefore cannot feel the heat burning their skin. It seems that there are some seats that do not offer a maximum temperature and therefore are exceeding the heat that can be tolerated by the skin, causing burning.

The seats are being investigated after one hundred and thirty eight complaints over a six year period, with sixty nine of the reports mentioning fire and the others reporting anything from a burning smell to flames within the vehicle.

There has been a lot of research into burn thresholds, and critics are calling for car seats that heat to have a maximum temperature on then of one hundred and five degrees to ensure that there is no burning issue.

Of the reports filed, Mercedes and BMW are the cars that are most involved, and with Mercedes it seems that the M class and GL class are the most responsible.

Safety precautions with these devices varies from car manufacturer to manufacturer, and researchers believe that by implementing an industry standard it will protect passengers from burns. Some manufacturers have put safety measures in their heated car seats by putting heaters in the car which turn off after a certain amount of time, or setting a temperature threshold so that burns are not experienced. The research  states that it takes at least eight hours for a burn to develop so it is hard for a passenger to tell for a period of time.

If you are driving in the UK< whether your car has heated seats or not, then make sure that you have Car Insurance. Policies are readily available online and are far cheaper here.

A prank is a prank, whoopee cushions and fake phone calls are one thing, but when it comes to giving you points on your licence and a fine to pay, then it’s not as funny. And this is a joke that hundreds of drivers fell foul of when jokers posted a forty miles per hour sign in a thirty zone, and a lot of drivers got flashed.

Residents who lived on the road say that the camera behaved like a strobe light in a disco on that particular day, as it caught drivers accelerating, wrongly believing that the speed limit had changed. Bradford council believe that it was a member of the public playing a joke, and the sign has now removed, but not before it caught a great deal of drivers. It seems like it was an easy mistake for drivers to make as the speed limit on this stretch of road was previously set at forty miles per hour, but was recently lowered to protect the safety of other road users and pedestrians in the area.

Darren Badrock, Bradford Council’s principal engineer for Bradford South, said: ‘The 40mph sign was not put up by the council and appears to have been placed there by a member of the public. We have now removed it. Whoever put it up may think it was just a practical joke but it is actually crassly irresponsible. We lowered the limit to 30mph on Woodside Road because there had been 157 casualties on the A641 over three years. Encouraging people to drive faster than the speed limit may put lives at risk.’

The police have said that anyone who has received a fine that they believe is wrong should contact them to query the fine. By the time the police were aware of the situation the rogue speed limit had been removed.

If you are driving on the roads in the UK then you need to make sure that you have Car Insurance. UK policies are readily available online and come at a much cheaper price than getting them over the phone or through a broker.

Car accidents can be scary for anyone, whatever the scale of the incident, but a man who has recently survived a car accident is luckier than most. He survived a two hundred foot drop when he drove his car off the side of the southern rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, America.

The grand canyon national park is the oldest national park in the united states of America and the centre of the attraction is the grand canyon, a gorge that was carved out by the Colorado river. It is one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, and attracts millions of tourists on a yearly basis, due to it being an area of outstanding natural beauty.

Surprisingly, the twenty one year old driver was able to rescue himself from the wreckage of the car and climb to the top of the canyon to get help. Park rangers were alerted to the accident after the man flagged down a tourist at the top of the rim, who then went for help/. The accident took place at quarter to eight in the evening, as the sun was going down, and park rangers founf the car embedded in some trees after going to the site to corroborate his story. The twenty one year old seems to have someone watching over him, as the car had stopped just ten feet from the next precipice. If the car had travelled this far he would have most likely been killed in the freak accident. The man suffered nothing more than minor injuries, which was miraculous considering the height from which he fell.

Park rangers are making plans to remove the car but due to the harsh terrain it is proving very difficult, although the park rangers want it removed as soon as possible to not impact on the tourism, as four point five million tourists visit the site on a yearly basis.

If you are driving in the UK or abroad then ensure you are covered by Drivers Insurance, as this will protect you against any accident or issue when driving on your trip.

There are a lot of options out there for us in terms of cars, but if money was no object you would opt for beauty, right? There are some beautiful cars out there, so add one of these to your dream car bucket list….

The Aston Martin DB9

Being a girl, I think I’m in a minority when I say I have had the chance to drive one of these, and it is wonderful; punchy and high tech with a really luxurious feel. The car boasts great handling and inside you feel like you have entered another world with the well equipped dash board and sumptuous features. Opt for the stunning silver and turn heads on any road that you drive.

Audi R8

The marmite of the Audi world, they are available in a number of different options, but if you have money to burn then opt for the Coupe V8 which offers you high tech extras like a Bang and Olfsen sound system (not to be sniffed at) and DVD based sat nav. The tyre pressure monitoring system will keep you safe, not to mention the fact that its really pretty!

Mclaren MP4-12C

The latest road car from Mclaren is a design masterpiece is good enough for Jenson Button, and therefore good enough for me! It fails to compromise on their well known F1 style, offering innovative designs like having the radiator near the engine to shorten the pipe work and save weight. The carbon monocell weighs less than the average passenger, but sorry guys, not even this one looks good in orange.

Ferrari Enzo

Anything that has vertical lifting doors is cool, but the Ferrari Enzo is in a level of its own. With its two seat berlinetta style body the car is impressive in speed and one of the most sleek and awesome looking cars this side of the Bugatti Veyron.

TVR Tuscan V6

Ok, so TVR’s aren’t well know in their safety, and are renowned for not having air bags or any other safety features, and their rear wheel steering has been the cause of multiple deaths in the UK, but they are so pretty that we can forgive them, can’t we?

If you are planning on purchasing a dream car then good luck with Car Insurance!

Car fanatics all over the world got excited last month when the new Lamborghini Aventador launched; the first offering from the brand in nearly a decade. It replaces the Murcielago and has big boots to fill as the newcomer after this firm favourite in the car world bows out of production. People flocked to the Geneva motor show in march to see the unveiling of this new beauty, and as normal, Lamborghini didn’t fail to impress.

The car offers a six point five litre engine which boasts six hundred and ninety brake horsepower and is the most powerful Lamborghini ever produced. The car has a pushrod spring and damper system which has previously only been seen in hyper cars from Ferrari and Maserati, causing car fanatics to hold their breath with a little more excitement.

As well as being the fastest of the fast, it gains street cred by coming in the bright orange hues, and with the synonymous vertical lifting doors. These vehicles are nothing if not the height of cool, and cars that most of us can only dream of owning in our lifetimes. And think of the Car Insurance costs on an engine like this!

Polled by Evo to be much faster than its older brothers the Murcielago and the Gallardo, the Aventador is the slimmer younger sibling, offering a sleeker styling and faster paces. This makes sense as the car is a whole new design; new chassis, new engine and borrows nothing from the styles of its aged counterparts. It hits nearly 220mph at its top speed and can do nought to seventy in just over three seconds.

Impressive.

This morning, on my way to work I was running late, and therefore drive a tiny bit faster as I travelled on the roads to the office. The speed bumps down this particular road are pretty high, and my car hit one of them with a worrying bump. I am now slightly concerned about the resilience of the underneath of my car and how it has coped with my slightly reckless driving.

Potholes and speedbumps are the worst contributers to car damage, and can be costly to the UK driver. But why is nothing being done about them? I recently read an article about how experts believe that speed bumps are just dangerous to drivers and rarely have an effect on speed. Why do we still have them on the roads then?

Potholes are another problem. Caused by the bad weather causing moisture in the road to expand and crack the road, potholes make us bump our cars up and down and ruin the alignment and the steering column; all costly errors to fix. make sure that you have Car Insurance in case there are any problems and you need them fixing.

Have you had any car problems as a result of speed bumps and potholes? Let me know.