• All of you budding Harvey Smiths out there will
Page 28
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
be relieved to know that the British Equestrian Federation has cantered home with a three-year sponsorship deal with Land Rover.
Land Rover has agreed to support home trials, young riders and the Team Range Rover, managed by Captain Mark Phillips, in preparation for the 1992 Olympics.
• Why, oh why do motorists get involved in "races" with other drivers or stay in the outside lane of the motorway for hours on end? Do drivers drink and drive more if in a bad mood, or do they think that disregarding the speed limit • For the RSPCA good communications can mean the difference between life and death. Each year the association receives more than a million calls from the public reporting cases of cruelty, neglect, sickness, suffering and injury to animals.
The problem is ensuring that RSPCA staff are directed quickly and accurately to the correct destination. Until last October the association relied on the old community repeater radio system, but this caused problems because of congestion on the system.
Now the RSPCA in London and the South East is using Band III equipment supplied by Securicor, and after three months there is already talk of fitting data communications equipment in the RSPCA's 250 vans.
Assorted Blackies, Spots, Fluffs and Sheps will be able to sleep more soundly in their baskets from now on.
will mean an accident?
These are some of the intriguing posers being put to 3,000 drivers in two surveys by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory. The TRRL wants to find out more about the 90% of accidents though to be the driver's fault.
One survey will look at drivers' decision-making and how it relates to accidents; the other will examine the errors people make when driving. The research will take three years. • There are now nearly 500 :»illion vehicles in the wor!d, counting all the cars, lorries and buses. USA claims first place with 176.5 million road vehicles. Japan is second with 44.9 millon and West Germany third with 27.7 million. The UK is sixth; we have 19.2 million vehicles.
On average about 80% of the world's vehicles are cars, The USA has 136 million cars. We have 16.5 million; 86% of our total vehicle parc. In the USSR, however, only about half its vehicles are cars, and in China only one third.
The number of vehicles is catching up with the population in some countries. In the USA there is one vehicle for every 1.4 people. Here in the UK there is one for every 2.9 of us. But China's one billion people outnumber their vehicles by 340 to 1. In India there are 306 people per vehicle.
The USA is a world beater for roads too, with nearly four million miles to serve its vehicles. India is second with 1.1 million miles of roads. Here in the UK we have 216,000 miles of road.
Spare a thought for the road planners! If all our 19 million vehicles were on the road at once, there would be, on average, 89 vehicles per mile! It's just as well we have multi-lane systems.
Still, we mustn't be surprised by traffic jams. Except in India, where it only averages two vehicles a mile.
• Some magazines yearn to be garlanded with laurels each time the editorial awards are passed around, but at Commercial Motor we aim for a far more exclusive recognition.
Only last Tuesday the magazine received one of its greatest accolades: our 5-11 January issue made a guest appearance on Coronation Street. Millions of viewers saw Rita Fairclough, always one of our favourites, fingering the copy before placing it on the magazine shelves in her shop.
Rumour has it that Rita drives a diesel car and was interested in the results of our fuel test in that issue.
Last summer we were proud to see a copy of Commercial Motor in Eastenders. Could it be that we are the journal that all the soap stars read?
We plan to send complimentary copies to Larry Hagman, Joan Collins and Kylie Minogue in the hope of further accolades.
• Remember our story last week about Ratcliffs flick-thru promo booklet to market its Solo lift? (CM 26 January) Well that's nothing compared with a brochure Commer produced in the early 1950s for its Ts.3 engine, my correspondent tells me.
The 2cm thick, all-colour notebook showed a crosssection of the horizontallyopposed three-cylinder engine. Different colours were used to show inlet and exhaust air, two pistons and moving crankshaft.
The booklet, remembers my informant, "was the most elaborate thing I've ever seen." Not so the engine, perhaps. Although it lasted 15 years, it went out of production in 1968/69. It was "exceptionally noisy", he says.