Vivian Davis, Fleet, Hampshire
SILENCE IS GOLDEN: There are concerns about in-car entertainment other than those mentioned by Clive Richardson (Letters, last week). I often wonder if it is a contributory factor in road rage incidents. The bottom of my garden is close to a busy junction controlled by traffic lights and my ears are frequently assailed by drum beats from stationary cars. The racket is enough to raise my blood pressure and must surely be enough to trigger an angry response to any driving infraction.
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I am often reminded of my father, who taught me to drive 50 years ago. He was on a rota of drivers of the first car owned by Durham County constabulary and his view was that driving is a skill which demands total concentration. In the days when there were few cars on the road, he would never allow unnecessary conversation in a car he was driving.
Robert Hedley, via e-mail
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TWENTY-FOUR SEVEN: Travelling back from a gig at 2am recently I was appalled at the lack of freight on the roads (Letters, last week). We are looking to spend billions of pounds on widening roads to cater for increased freight and traffic, and around me was absolutely nothing! We are obviously failing to realise the full potential of our roads, which are only being run to capacity during a relatively few hours of the day. Surely we should split some of this volume and save our countryside?
Jeff Davenport, Derbyshire
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MERCEDES SERVICE: Jeremy Clarkson’s article on the Mercedes E-class and the company’s standard of service (July 20) really hit a note with me. Having owned seven Caterham 7s and driven them every day of the year for 18 years, I recently bought my first Mercedes. Reliability, service and quality are what I thought I was getting. What I got in my small A-class 170 CDI diesel was a new engine at 25,000 miles. It took them five weeks to discover what was wrong and replace the engine, and a couple of other parts died on me. Then there was an incident of overcharging, and the parking money that disappeared from the ashtray during a service.
They MoT’d the car and damaged the front so it had to be sent to sub-contractors for repair and respray. When the car was ready after the repairs they phoned to ask if I would like them to fit a new CD player. I replied: “Why would I want two in my car?” It transpired that mine had vanished from the car while the car was in for its respray.
I wrote to Mercedes customer services and eventually, after writing to the chief executive officer, they are in the process of giving me an extra year’s warranty.
I thought that they only messed people like me around, so I am glad to hear that they extend this policy of treating their customers like a really unfortunate interruption to their day to people like yourself — it’s one way of getting their name in print!
John Vadgama via email
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