Following close on our story about daytime running lights and your response to our last poll, the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs reports that the European Commission has decided against requiring the use of daytime running lights. Maybe the Commission members read Motorbase.com, as their main concern was that the safety of vulnerable road users (i.e. pedestrians, cyclists etc) might not benefit from cars running around on dipped headlights - exactly the point we made.
Car Tax: the EU wants a centralised approach linking tax more closely with emissions, but can't agree on an approach. Meanwhile the Dutch government has announced plans to fit satellite tracking to all eight million vehicles on its roads by 2016 in order to operate a road pricing scheme. Looks like a good subject for our next poll - the writer's personal view is that you can't improve on the simplest answer - put the tax on fuel. If you use the roads more, you use more fuel, so you pay more tax - and if your vehicle is heavier or is inefficient in its use of fuel and therefore produces more emissions, it will use more fuel, so pay more tax. Simple, effective, fair, and it doesn't cost billions of pounds/euros to implement like this daft satellite system would. What do you think? We'll give you a chance to vote soon....
City Centre emissions restrictions in Europe have become quite a worry for historic vehicle owners, with non-cat-equipped cars banned from city centres on weekdays in several countries, especially Italy and, increasingly, Germany. Our Italian friends who drive to work at Fiat every day in Turin in their 1974 Fiat 500 are ignoring it and report that so are many others, and even the authorities seem unclear and unwilling to enforce the rule for classics - typical of the Italian approach to Euro legislation, if it's daft, ignore it. The ruthlessly efficient Germans take a different approach - if it's daft, modify it - and we're delighted to hear that the German Parliament has amended its legislation to exempt historic vehicles from the restrictions. We hope others will follow.
Malcolm McKay, Motorbase News Editor
