Government abandons plan to make driving test tougher

Proposals to make learning to drive much tougher in a bid to improve road safety amongst young people have been abandoned by the government, Radio 1’s Newsbeat reports. The changes would have involved the introduction of a probationary licence for the first 12 months, a curfew on driving late at night and compulsory lessons on motorway driving. But plans have been scraped because they would restrict young drivers’ lives too much.

Ford recalls 144,000 F-150s for airbag fix

Ford is recalling 144,000 F-150 pickups from the 2005 and 2006 model years because of concerns that the airbags may deploy without warning, the automaker said on Tuesday. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration advised Ford to recall the F-150 after investigating 238 reports of accidental airbag deployment. Seventy-seven injuries have been reported, including chipped teeth, minor burns and cuts to the arms, hands and face.

2011 Mazda2 Facelift revealed

The Mazda2 gets tweaked for 2011 Well, it’s sort of the 2011 facelift for the Mazda2, but that rather depends on what direction you come at this from. If you look at the UK and Euro offerings for the last year this is definitely a new nose and interior tweaks for the Mazda 2, but if you read our report in October 2009 about Mazda 2s coming off the production line in Thailand you’ll see that our ‘New, Facelift Mazda 2′ looks exactly the same as the Mazda 2 Facelift the Thai car got almost two years ago. But we have to be sensible and look at this from a domestic point of view – even if we do find it off that Mazda has taken two years to give the UK and Europe the updates coming out of Thailand two years ago.