Tips & Guides

The animal is almost never what hurts people. The tree, the ditch and the oncoming lane are, and all three are reached by swerving. Brake as hard as the car will let you, keep both hands on the wheel and hold your lane. Afterwards, call the police even if the car still drives, because the report number is what your insurer will ask for.

Petrol expands by about a tenth of a percent per degree, so a whole degree across a 50 litre fill is 50 millilitres, or about nine cents. The fuel sits in an underground tank at roughly the same temperature all year, and the pump's legal tolerance is five times larger than the effect you were worrying about.

WD stands for Water Displacement and the 40 is the fortieth attempt at the formula, which tells you what it was built to do: push water off metal and creep into corrosion. It is not a grease, and using it as one on brakes, belts, seals, locks or headlight lenses causes real damage.

Ten grams out of balance throws about 2.5 kg of force at your wheel fourteen times a second at 100 km/h, which is why a lost balance weight is felt within a day. Where you feel the shake tells you which end of the car it is, and whether balancing is even the right fix.

The first ten minutes of rain after a dry spell give you the most slippery road surface of the year, because the shower lifts weeks of oil, diesel and rubber into a film instead of washing it away. Stretch the gap to four seconds, brake in a straight line and switch your dipped headlights on by hand.

ISA is a warning system, not a speed limiter. It has been compulsory on every new car registered in the EU since 7 July 2024, it works out the limit from a camera and a map that regularly disagree, and the same law that put it there guarantees you can switch it off for the drive. It just will not stay off.

A write-off settlement is built from two figures an expert chose, not from what you paid or what you still owe. Ask for both numbers in writing, gather comparable cars and service records before you answer, and check your policy for the counter-expertise clause that often pays for an expert of your own.

Tyre rubber ages on a clock of its own, whether the car moves or not. The last four digits of the DOT code on the sidewall give the week and the year the tyre was built, and past roughly ten years, tread depth stops being the number that matters. Two minutes with a torch tells you where you stand.

The temperature of your battery sets your charging speed, not the rating on the charger. Set the fast charger as a destination in the car's own navigation at least half an hour before you arrive, and a cold-weather stop can shrink from fifty minutes to twenty.