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POTHOLES cause 'over £1 billion in damage every year'

POTHOLES are costing British drivers £1.2 billion every year due to damage to suspension, steering and wheels. This is a 16% rise in the cost of damage to cars on the UK’s roads and the weather has played a major part in the rise in the number of potholes. Councils say they don’t have the money to deal with the problem due to budget cuts and there has also been an 18% increase in the number of dangerous potholes reported during the past 12 months according to the Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA).

2014 Ford Mondeo testing autonomous driving technologies (video)

The Ford Fusion with its LIDAR ears allowing autonomous driving Car makers are starting to take self-driving, autonomous cars very seriously, and we’ve recently seen Mercedes testing their autonomous driving S-Class in Berlin, Volvo planning a big trial of 100 self-driving cars in Gothenberg and Tesla planning systems that will do 90 per cent of your driving within 3 years. Now it’s Ford’s turn. Ford has equipped a Fusion Hybrid (that’s the North American version of the new Ford Mondeo we still haven’t got in the UK) with its autonomous vehicle technology to conduct research in partnership with the University of Michigan and State Farm (a big group of insurance companies in the US). The test Fusion gets a system called LIDAR (light detection and range – the funny looking ears on the top of the Fusion in the picture above) which can scan the road ahead up to 2.5 million times a second and create a 3D map of the surroundings.

Mini reveals John Cooper Works Concept at Detroit auto show

Today at the Detroit Auto Show Mini debuted the new 2014 John Cooper Works Concept. The JCW (as the cool people call it) is the performance version of the Mini, and the debut of the concept included a rock band and impressive amount of smoke courtesy of a fog machine. The JCW concept was decked out in traditional John Cooper Works style, and that meant an exclusive color scheme with red color accents over Bright Highways Grey paint, and 18-inch light alloy wheels.