News

A combination of wet weather in 2012 and this week's freeze is paving the way for a season of atrocious potholes. Hidden dangers: This pothole, photographed this morning, will be invisible to motorists once its full of snow. A record-breaking year for rainfall in 2012...

A child trailer with a built-in electric motor capable of pushing a bicycle at up to 19mph has gone on sale for less than £500. The design is an evolution of the original RideKick powered bike trailer – a clever alternative to a conventional e-bike that gives any bicycle a boost of battery power without the need for modification. A throttle...

If you cycle on the road, it's easy to bemoan the conditions for bicycles. However, next time your teeth rattle as your wheels sink into a pothole, your heart jumps as car overtakes with inches to spare or you return to your bike only to find its seat has been pinched, consider perhaps the plight of women in North Korea, all of whom have...

With sub-zero temperatures predicted for much of the country this weekend, drivers are being urged to ensure they have adequate car breakdown cover in place. Freezing temperatures place an additional strain on cars and result in flat batteries being the number one cause of breakdowns at this time of year. If you do not have car breakdown...

Hummer 4x4s have always looked incongruous on British roads; their sizeable chrome grilles that do such a good job reflecting the California sun and sky look garish on a drab winter’s day over here and the obesity of their bodywork is ill-suited to narrower streets. You don’t need to be a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist to recognise 15mpg...

Three-dimensional printers allow you to manufacture almost anything you want at home, including a host of cycling-related accessories. The bicycle lamp attachment pictured right deflects some of the light so that it is visible from the side – a useful boost to visibility on dark winter mornings and nights. It was created using a 3-D printed...

One of the snags about owning an electric car is the time it takes to top up its batteries – it can take up to 8 hours to re-charge fully from a domestic electricity supply and with range compromised by cold weather the problem is particularly bad at this time of year. In contrast to car makers like Nissan and Renault, who are forging ahead...

If you can design a new, commercially-viable way of foiling bicycle thieves you could walk away with £50,000 in cash. Cyclists often ask when bike insurance can cost as much as car cover, but they are far more likely to be victims of theft than motorists. It’s estimated that over 500,000 bikes are stolen each year in Britain – that’s the...

Kickstarter.com is an online, democratic version of dragon's den that sees you, the website visitor, take on the role of the investor. But instead of equity, you get the chance to buy things before they hit the shops. The crowd funding website, which has only recently opened up to British designers, now includes a number of interesting...

An estimated 1m motorists will find themselves in need of roadside assistance in the winter months between December and February. Breakdown cover provider ETA analysed the records of 800,000 customers and found that over the same period last year, one car in Britain broke down every 7 seconds day and night. Cars are most likely to break...