Little benefit for the average motorist

HELPDESK:Answering all your motoring queries

From Edward Rafferty, Co Wexford: I've read on internet sites that replacing the regular "air" in your tyres with pure nitrogen gas will: prevent leakage through the porous tyre sidewall; lengthen the life of the tyre; and enable the motorist to slightly "over-inflate" the tyre safely, thus improving the petrol mileage.

These sites do not say where pure nitrogen is available to fill the tyres. Can you supply any of these details?

According to a spokesman for Continental Tyres, the benefit you will get from putting nitrogen in a regular family car would be so minuscule as to be negligible. It's used in Formula One because the tyres get so hot that there is a benefit in maintaining the pressure, but for normal motoring there's no point. Tyre service firms supply nitrogen in the UK, but charge for the service. I don't believe there are any suppliers in Ireland at present.

From David Mc Fadden: I have a Ford Mondeo registered in 2005, so it's the 2001 model. I need to get Isofix anchors fitted in the back seat of the car to attach a baby seat. Is it possible to do this?

Yes, you can get them fitted. Your garage needs to check the car and may not have it in order, but any Ford dealer will be able to help you with these.

From Alison Behal: Mr Gormley and others encourage a green agenda, we are told. Reduce, re-use, recycle. How does this fit in with older cars. They have many years of safe and (relatively) inexpensive driving left in them. A 1997 Toyota Carina diesel, for example, will have an annual tax of €590. The brand-new Corolla diesel costs €150. The older car in good condition with NCT will cost approx €1,200 to buy. The tax of €590 is certainly a big disincentive, however, and serious pressure on a young person to spend €23,000 on a new car which has had a major impact in its manufacture on the environment, but with greatly reduced road tax.

Surely older cars should be encouraged. Remember: reduce, re-use, recycle. This is a type of planned obsolescence being forced (in particular) on the younger generation.

It is unfortunate for older car owners, but the simple fact is that older cars are less fuel efficient and more polluting than new cars. So long as carbon emissions are being fingered by global politicians and scientists as the greatest scourge of our time, then old cars will be gradually forced from the road.

The tax is as much an encouragement to the car industry to come up with more efficient technology as it is an incentive to buyers.

From Bob Dixon, Dublin: I have a query relating to the modified exhaust laws that came into effect this week. Could you please tell me whom this affects? Who will enforce it? I still see companies selling these exhausts online even though they may be illegal.

Though I sound like a grumpy old man, the cars going past my house are louder than the planes that fly overhead and genuinely disturb my wife, my baby and I, and reduce our standard of living as a result.

I have looked into this problem at length previously and found that none of these cars should have passed the NCT if they are too noisy. Why have they passed? Why are they on the road? Are cars tested for noise in the NCT? If not then why not, if it is a stipulation for a pass that they can't be noisy? Will the new EU regulations resolve my issues and give me a peaceful life? Or is it just lip service?

From what we can tell, very little has happened relating to this law. According to Justin Delaney, editor of Modified Motors magazine, as long as an exhaust is EU/TUV approved then it is legal to have fitted to the car and it will pass the NCT. "We have heard of very few cars failing their NCT due to exhaust problems and we have had meetings with the gardaí who have told us that currently they have no way of measuring the noise from the exhausts."

This is not to say that drivers are not altering their exhausts for the NCT and then removing silencers afterwards. Until the gardaí have some method of testing the noise levels from such cars, the problem looks set to continue for some time.