Myth: You can drive as long as you are not slurring words or acting erratically.

Fact: The skills and coordination needed for driving are compromised long before the obvious signs of intoxication are visible. In addition, the sedative effects of alcohol, combined with the late night hours, place you at much greater risk of nodding off or losing attention behind the wheel.

Myth: Drink coffee. Caffeine will sober you up.

Fact: Caffeine may help with drowsiness, but it doesn't counteract the effect of alcohol on decision-making or coordination. The body needs time to metabolize (break down) alcohol and even more time to return to normal. There are no quick cures-only time will help.

Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

Wow. This seems like a massive undertaking, and hopefully the video recognition software that they use to take down the plate numbers is up to snuff. I can imagine lots of interest in photo blocking sprays and drivers "accidentally" forgetting to clean their plates off.

The information is also going to be made available to British intelligence officers. I can imagine lots of folks being interested in peeking at the data (where was my spouse last Saturday night?) so I hope the security system is impenetrable.

In the spotlight: Chevrolet's 2006 Z06 Corvette sports car. It is a breathtaking reminder that driving is, and ought to be, glorious fun.

The Z06 is a higher-performance version of the already high-performance Corvette. And what's great about it is the same thing that's great about the Corvette generally. You get stunning acceleration, handling, braking, steering and style in a car you can comfortably drive every day for a price the exotic foreign guys can't touch.

Heck, even the exotic Detroit guys can't beat it, dollar-for-dollar.

"We wanted to do a car that could compete with a lot of the supercars out there at $200,000 or $400,000, but one you could actually afford," says Harlan Charles, Corvette product manager.

A seat belt broke recently. The car gets heat but not air, but none of that bothers Hansen too much. He likes to ride with the windows down, anyway. He sees the car, a hand-me-down from his dad, as a boon; he didn't have a job when he got it at 16.

"It gets me from Point A to Point B," he says. "That's really all I need right now."

According to Auto Extra's survey, 90% of the parents quizzed said safety was the most important factor. Not surprisingly, when asked about their children, 66% of parents said "style or coolness" was a major concern for their children, and 61% listed safety as a concern.

All of which means a little shuffling of priorities. The argument of insurance costs can help.

"One of the biggest challenges a family faces when selecting a car for a teen driver is convincing the teen that there are more important considerations than what's cool," says Charley Gillespie, a spokesman for Nationwide insurance.

Although sales of truck-based SUVs are down from their peak of nearly 3 million units in 2000, "the total SUV market keeps growing," said Ford's George Pipas.

The growth of SUV sales is coming from so-called "crossovers" or CUVs, which are car-based vehicles. In fact, Pipas predicted that crossover sales would surpass SUV sales in 2006, nearly three or four years earlier than previous projections.

Currently, about 2.45 million traditional SUVs have been sold through 2005 versus sales of 2.24 million CUVs, and the sales figures for those segments will flip next year, Pipas forecasted.

Mazda has just announced that it will be bringing several never-before seen vehicles to crown its display at the 2006 North American International Auto Show which takes place this coming January. Aside from showing updates to the Mazda6 and the all-new MX-5 roadster, it will be bringing a pair of economy-sized concepts and a unique design study. Mazda will also be debuting its all-new CX-7 crossover utility vehicle.

The Kabura Concept is the third and final vehicle in Mazdas global design trilogy. This three-part series is a showcase of the many cultural influences that surround each of its design studios. Named after the Japanese term used for the first arrow into battle, the Kabura was styled and built at Mazdas design center in California. It follows the European-designed Sassou subcompact and the Japanese-designed Senku concept.

Based off of the MX-5s floorpan and powertrain, the Kabura is a lightweight, rear-wheel drive sports car designed to emphasize the pleasures of driving, without sacrificing versatility. Mazda has already proven this point twice over with its current generation of sports cars - the astonishingly practical four-door RX-8 and the latest MX-5 with its impressively sized trunk. Fans of Mazda no doubt look forward to seeing what surprises are in store with the Kabura.

According to a recent study by CNW Marketing Research of Bandon, Ore., 32 percent of American new-car buyers say they would "seriously consider" a hybrid if gas prices reached $3.75 a gallon. That?s up from 19 percent in 2002.

Hybrid prices range from the two-seat Honda hatchback Insight at about $20,000 to the luxurious Lexus sport utility vehicle, the RX 400h, which starts at $49,060.

Starting Jan. 1, federal tax credits will range from $1,700 to $3,000 depending on how much fuel a car saves, which may help some consumers.

"Ford and GM are now in a race to shrink," John Casesa, Merrill Lynch's automotive analyst, said in a note to investors. Ford's "much anticipated restructuring plan appears more ambitious than we expected and more sweeping than GM's recently announced plan."

He expects Ford to cut 10 assembly and components plants and up to 30% of its 98,000-employee unionized workforce in the USA and Canada. It would trump similar plans announced last month by General Motors, which plans to cut up to 30,000 workers, because Ford is smaller than GM.

Ford confirmed that its board tackled the plan as part of its regularly scheduled two-day meeting, but company spokesman Tom Hoyt reiterated Thursday that no announcement is expected until next month.

....

Five to 10 plants will be shuttered - "but closer to 10," he said in an interview. The biggest targets are likely to be plants making vehicles nearing the end of their life cycles.

Barnes, a 29-year veteran of UPS who started sorting packages while in college, told me how UPS expects to save $600 million per year through package flow technologies, which will enable a reduction of 100 million travel miles in the U.S. alone, which equates to 14 million gallons of fuel, he said. The package flow optimization includes constant wireless communications via the DIADs, smart labels (including RFID in the future) and preloading vehicles and directing drivers according to advanced analytics that calculate the most efficient routes, including avoiding left-hand turns, based on the package load.

But in-dash DVD players - which play in full view of the driver - are a newer phenomenon that have been made popular by shows like MTV's "Pimp My Ride," where mechanics spruce up old vehicles and install extravagant bells and whistles.

Indeed, in a survey by J.D. Power & Associates of new-car buyers last year, DVD players were favoured by 28 per cent of respondents, up from 16 per cent in 2000.

But these gadgets can drive motorists to distraction and have deadly consequences.

If installed as recommended, DVD players will not work in an automobile unless the emergency brake is on or the vehicle is in park. But owners can defeat the safety measures by installing the devices themselves.

However, this is just the beginning, as now we have the "cockpits" of our cars adorned with an ever growing plethora of devices that have little to do with safe driving and only serve as dangerous distractions.

Pro-active theft prevention

Full accreditation to Thatcham Category 5

Remote vehicle immobilisation

Innovative driver recognition system using Bluetooth technology

Satellite GPS vehicle tracking

SOC from world leading provider, BT redcare

Integration with onboard vehicle computer systems

Pan-European Coverage

Professional installation by VSIB accredited installers anywhere in the UK

So now you really have to carry your phone with you, and what happens when you lose your phone? Also, what if your car is stolen with the phone inside? A better solution would be to include a receiver so that you can text message your vehicle with a special code to disable it every time you leave the vehicle. If the car has a GPS system, why not be able to ping it for its location without alerting the thief?

Here's how the system typically works. The manufacturer ships a bunch of Schnauzer 900XZs to the dealership. The dealership is billed at and pays the invoice price. Once a Schnauzer is sold, the manufacturer deposits a certain percentage of the vehicle price into a kitty for the dealer. This is the "holdback" percentage, which varies but is usually between 2% and 5%. You'll find the holdback percentage for any particular vehicle listed at many of the auto supersites online, such as www.edmunds.com, carpoint.msn.com, or www.thecarconnection.com.

Regularly, perhaps once per quarter, the manufacturer clears out the kitty and sends the dealer a check. This holdback system permits the dealer to swear to you that he's paying a certain invoice price for the vehicle, while not mentioning that he gets a certain percentage of that price back. On a $20,000 car, a 3% holdback comes to $600 -- and it's an amount you don't have to surrender in full to the dealer.

GM: -11.3 percent
Ford: -18 percent
DaimlerChrysler: -6.6 percent
Toyota: +5.5 percent
Honda: +6.4 percent
Nissan: -7.7 percent
Subaru: +.5 percent
Suzuki: +13.5 percent
BMW: +7 percent
Isuzu: -53.2 percent (Ouch!)

Research released this week said one in five male drivers said their eyes were diverted from the road by posters of scantily clad women -- such as model Eva Herzigova's famous adverts for Wonderbra which bore the tagline "Hello Boys."

However only one in 10 women were put off by the sight of a semi-dressed male model.

He said novel advertising could cause a significant risk of distracting drivers at crucial times, such as going round a difficult roundabout.

"In fact, this risk is probably underestimated and we need to do more research on the possibility of excluding non-essential information when the driver is already busy dealing with the road," he said.

The study, by Privilege Insurance, said a 5-second distraction at 60 mph equated to driving at least the length of a soccer pitch without fully concentrating.