Michael McAleer answers your queries
From D Carney:
I can't believe how complicated it is to buy a child seat. It's a crazy system. Surely the car firm's should standardise the issue.
The car industry has been lax on child safety. Even the ISOFIX standardised seating system doesn't mean that all seats fit all cars. Some makers don't even fit the system.
Our colleague Donal Byrne has written in Motors on the issue and referred recently to the fact that because of the different lay-out and design of seat belts and seats, four out of five of us are wrongly fitting child seats.
The most frightening statistic of all is that 77 per cent of children who died on Irish roads between 1996 and 2000 were not restrained by anything at all. In total 69 children - the equivalent of three primary school classes - died in that period.
Britain's Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents points out that ISOFIX factory-fitted points are still not as common as they should be.
If they were, more child seats would be designed with appropriate matching points that would simply click into the points in the seats of the car.
Car firms can be slow to react to changing demands from motorists but customers should consider contacting the distributors of the car to pass on their views or criticisms, so that they might be passed on to the manufacturing team.
In the meantime, how do you ensure the child seat you buy is the right one?
Donal reckons that customers should go to a specialist shop which can fit the seat into the car for you.
If you can't find a shop with experienced personnel who will actually go out to your car with you and with a selection of seats, keep going until you do.
From Ann Graham, Clondalkin:
At a worldwide gathering of the Carden "clan" in Cheshire in 2002, one of the descendants arrived from Ireland with a "New Carden" car.
I think it was dated 1926 and retailed then for £100.00. The registration was PE 6048.
What I want to know is was it a one-off production or how many were made?
Who could afford to produce it and market it?
Where? I overheard that this particular car had been laid up since 1929 before being found and restored. It was beautiful. Any help would be appreciated.
Our resident motoring historian, Bob Montgomery, writes: "The Carden was one of the more unusual motors manufactured in the 1920s - a period which abounded in some strange notions of what a car should be and how it should look.
"The Carden Cyclecar of 1919 was initially a single-seater rear-engined single-cylinder car but then re-appeared as a two-seater with a two-stroke flat twin engine. In 1923, the company, now called New Carden, produced two- and four-seater open body versions.
"At £90 the New Carden was cheap and despite its peculiarities proved quite popular in the early 1920s at a time when those who could afford to motor were car-starved.
"The last New Carden was manufactured in 1925. Incidently, the designer, John Carden went on to better things and designed the half-tracked universal carrier which was to become famous as the Bren Gun Carrier in the second World War.
From Peter Keogh:
Anybody whom I know that has received penalty points, has been penalised because of speeding.
Yet there is a number of other offences at least as dangerous if not more so, that are supposed to be penalised. When driving at night I have seen many cars with deficient lights.
I have seen numerous parents driving with unstrapped kids jumping all over the car. Many drivers, including some driving big trucks, continue to use mobile telephones. My impression is that these offences require expensive Garda time to enforce and are thus largely ignored.
Speeding may also require Garda time but can be monitored by relatively inexpensive remote cameras. Cynicism suggests that the revenue collecting offences such as speeding are a priority at the expense of other offences.
Perhaps you may tell me that my impressions are wrong and that speeding is not the only offence generating penalty points.
In fairness to the authorities, speeding remains the main contributor to road deaths. However, the figures are stark when it comes to the number of drivers penalised for speeding compared to the other penalty point offences.
Of the 167,243 offences for which penalty points were incurred up to June 30th this year, 158,910 were for speeding, while only 7, 574 were for the non-wearing of seatbelts and only 70 for driving without insurance.
From Conall Lalor:
When selling your car privately, have you any tips for handling the payment? How best can you protect yourself from fraudulent payment?
Cash is king, but if you are selling off the likes of an Aston Martin DB9 - or even a 2000 Ford Focus - then perhaps a bank draft is the next best option.
• Send your queries to Motors Help Desk, The Irish Times, Fleet Street, Dublin 2 - or e-mail them to motorshelp@irish-times.ie