Help Desk

The greying of the green Helpdesk has had a steady stream of emails and letters of support for the 'Lights on Daytime' campaign in Dublin, and recent correspondence on the difficulty in seeing green cars against the foliage of country roads has brought forth calls for the campaign to be introduced nationally.

As for the colour of cars, it seems grey is the new green. Mike O'Brien writes that his problem is with grey cars in the city, where they blend with the concrete surface of the road.

"In my opinion, it strengthens the case for driving with lights on in daytime, something I have been doing for over 20 years," writes O'Brien.

One green car owner, Michael Coyle writes that he has always switched on his parking lights when driving.

He also writes that some years back an Italian lady told him that Italians had an extreme aversion to green cars. He asks of prejudices other countries have to particular colours.

"I know, for instance, that there are relatively few white cars in Ireland. Is this colour more popular in other countries?" We await a flood of responses from irate owners of white cars.

Remember Sweden's swap

Jim Murray of Dublin 16 writes of our piece on changing from driving on the left to right, that he was in Stockholm, Sweden on the historic day of September 3rd 1967 when the Swedes swapped sides.

"We were four Dublin lads hitching around Scandinavia. We learned that there was an anti-hitching press campaign in Sweden. Nothing for it but pool our scarce funds to hire a VW Beetle.

"In the capital, there was a 24-hour car/van curfew apart from emergency vehicles (shorter curfews in rural areas).

"At 3pm on the Saturday afternoon, as we watched from a pedestrian flyover, cars gradually appeared on the right-hand side of streets - it was like a mechanical city was being wound up.

"Within the hour, normal traffic had resumed but with a 30 kph limit for some days after. At this speed, we made our stately way through the countryside towards Denmark.

"I always understood that there were remarkably few accidents in the immediate aftermath. The public had been bombarded with publicity for months before."

Clearly lessons we can learn about publicising any changes in road policy, or signage.

Biodiesel

Ian Brown asks if there is anyone in Ireland that would convert his diesel car to run on biodiesel?

For the uninitiated, biodiesel is a fuel derived from vegetable or sunflower oil, or mustard seed. Chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, methanol and viscosity modifier are then added to prevent long-term damage to the engine.

In answer to Mr Brown's question: no conversion is necessary on diesel cars built after 1996. However, before Mr Brown drains his deep fat fryer of oil, George Campbell of the DIT gives a strong warning about the possible risk to Mr Brown's warranty and the need to have the relevant chemicals added to the raw vegetable oil.

Mr Campbell says: "The biggest problem is sourcing biodiesel with the required additives." There is also the risk of long-term damage from using vegetable oil without the right combination of chemicals. As far as manufacturers are concerned, Nissan in Austria has approved the use of biodiesel but others have been less than enthusiastic. More advice is available on the Internet. First stop www.biodiesel.org

Learning from Oz about overtaking

Cathal Kennedy writes to us with a novel idea for getting around the traffic congested roads in one piece.

He suggests we adopt the Australian model of installing overtaking lanes on national single lane roads. He tells us that while there he never really felt stressed when stuck behind a slower moving traffic as every three to four miles there was an overtaking lane.

"This was regardless of hills and stopped people taking their life in their hands on narrow roads. Would it be possible in Ireland that instead of having a continuous hard shoulder that an extra lane be regularly added for overtaking?"

A novel idea worth further study.