Following a period of dry weather that many have experienced recently, you can be sure that when it rains driver get caught out by the changed road conditions. Rubber from tyres and oil products adhere to the surface of the road, which when wet can be literally lethal, 95% of all accidents involve some degree of skidding.

Bill Plant has introduced a new Skid Control training package so whether you are a new driver having recently passed your test with Bill Plant driving school, or have driven for many years, the skid training scheme can only be of benefit to you when it comes to dealing with that unexpected incident which may be just around the next corner. We know that every day nine people die in road crashes in the UK, the roads account for the most deaths of young people between the ages of 15 to 24years of age; company drivers suffer an average of 150 deaths and serious injuries each week when driving on business.

Whether you are taking the car out for the first time since passing your theoretical and practical driving test, or you have been driving for some time, there are some practical tips that will keep you and other road users safe.

Check your speedometer regularly, especially when coming off high speed roads, modern cars are so powerful and comfortable they give drivers little sensation of their speed, so many drivers find themselves exceeding the speed limit without realising it. Check the speed limits, too many drivers who have been caught speeding, complain that they thought the road had a higher speed limit. A good suggestion would be to use third gear when in a thirty mph limit.

What has been known is that exceeding the speed limit makes little difference to your arrival time. The time it takes to complete a journey is determined much more by your average speed during the whole journey, rather than the maximum speed you achieve for part of it, better to be late “than dead on time”.

You can put it off no longer the time has come when the teenager in you’re family takes thier driving lessons, quite rightly so, they will need to be independent one day and not rely on you to ferry them around. But the way that they are being taught is to come under scrutiny this month as the Government is still rightly concerned about the number of young driver deaths on our roads. So what can you do as a parent when the time comes for them to take to the wheel? Professional bodies believe that there is no substitute for proper professional driving tuition.

You, as a hands on parent, can help by allowing them as much practice as you possibly can, but if you want to help your youngster learn to drive, you may need to go back for a refresher to driving school yourself as you have to realise that your driving style may be an effective one for you as an experienced driver, but not necessarily a direct fit with the syllabus that the ADI will be working to preparing your youngster for the test. Remember that your vehicle has to be suitable for practising in; your large automatic transmission car is entirely different from the friendly manual Vauxhall Corsa they will eventually take their practical driving test in.

When we refer to “A Spitfire” on a well read website concerned with cars and learning to drive, you would be forgiven if you thought that we were referring to that ubiquitous sports car the Triumph Spitfire, popular some years ago and still seen on the roads today. However, in this context you would be wrong as we are talking about a different kind of “Spitfire”, one that became very famous in 1940 along with its sister fighter plane the Hurricane, both of which along with a Lancaster Bomber can be seen flying with the Royal Air Force’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.

Bill Plant has lent his support to the Royal British Legion, North Yorkshire Ripon Branch, providing much needed funds to assist the volunteers of RBL in constructing a full size replica of this Supermarine Mk V iconic fighter aeroplane. To see, touch and to actually sit in this Spitfire, will be made possible this coming weekend Saturday 17th May 2008 when it will be displayed, along with other World War 2 memorabilia on Ripon’s Market Square, for the annual VE Day celebrations.