Road casualtiy figures falling 688See below.. The BBC item is taken from today's DfT report "Contributory factors to road accidents" (I'll dig the URL out for it if anyone want to read it, it's only 16 pages). However...
Adrian
OK Adrian, if it's any help ours is a 406 Rapier HDi, a June 2000 model, so W reg.
Anyhow the feature I don't like is the arrangement whereby I am limited to 30 minutes of radio-CD player usage unless the engine is running. Given that I'm retired and very fond of music and the countryside, I used to like to take the car out to a nice spot and settle down to a bit of CD enjoyment or reading. That doesn't work very well with this stupid Peugeot design. What happens is that the radio-CD player switches off after 30 minutes and the display briefly shows a message reading 'ECONOMY MODE ACTIVE'. The only way to overcome this is to start the engine for a few seconds and then switch it off, which gets me another 30 minutes of music - and this is supposed to be an electrical economy measure!!
Now (before somebody points this out) I appreciate that cars are primarily for driving about in, rather than sitting in while parked and listening to music, but in my circumstances this feature is a damned nuisance, and so illogical. The stupidity of it is emphasised when you bear in mind that after 30 minutes the radio-CD player stops working, but I could switch on all the lights and have wipers, washers and electric windows working all afternoon - with no time limit whatsoever on their functioning. The other thing is that you can remove the key from the ignition switch, get out, lock the car and walk away, and even then the radio will work - for 30 minutes!
Road casualtiy figures falling 689You could add to it the fact (mentioned on page 3 of the report) that "For each of the contributory factors given in an accident the police officer will indicate whether...
If anyone is worried about batteries being run down, the old system was to have the radio alive only when the ignition switch was in the accessories position, so if you switch off and leave the car the radio could not be left on. I would have thought that was adequate protection against getting a flat battery. I'm jolly sure that restarting the engine every 30 minutes is not helping in that respect.
Sorry about the rant, but this seems like a crackpot system.
Best wishes all, Dave.
