Infozone Breaking World News

Patrick McCrystal got a shock when he came back to his car and discovered he had a parking ticket after double yellow lines were painted under his vehicle. The 49 year old, who regularly parked his car in between two sets of yellow lines got a £70 fine and to make matters worse had yellow paint on his bumper.

Mr McCrystal told the press, “I couldn’t believe my eyes. They had extended the existing set of lines underneath my car, and then a warden had slapped a ticket on it”. He also added, “When I parked there were double yellows in front of my car, double yellows behind my car, but nothing in between.

“It has been my regular spot for two years and there was nothing to indicate I couldn’t park there.”

The fine was later rescinded by Derby City Council who said that the ticket was issued by error.

The M1 motorway has been closed between junctions 32 and 33 this morning after a tanker spiller more than 20 tonnes of Marmite on the road after hitting a motorhome. The crash happened around 10:15pm last night and the clean-up operation was still going ahead this morning causing rush hour delays.

A police spokeswoman said that the tanker driver was taken to hospital as a precautionary measure. She said, “‘we were called at 10.15pm yesterday to reports of a tanker, which was carrying 23.5 tonnes of yeast extract, overturning.”

Adding that, “Some of the contents were spilled on the northbound carriageway and we are in the process of emptying the remaining contents of the tanker and clearing up the spillage before it can be moved and the road reopened.”

Marmite has been a British favourite for over a hundred years and was even included in soldiers ration packs during World War I.

Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has confirmed that he will be the voice for Tom Tom’s latest satellite navigation device. Drivers will now be able to listen to Clarkson’s tongue and cheek instructions instead of the generic softly spoken woman found on many sat nav devices.

Describing how his voice will sound on the new device Clarkson said; “There’s a tone of voice I use when ordering people to do things, so ‘I said left, left, I said left’, you know, that kind of thing. It’s not a gentle sat nav voice, put it like that.”

Top Gear is one of the most popular car shows on television and is shown in 170 countries worldwide.

The new Tom Tom sat nav will be released sometime next month.

Mr Clarkson joins a host of other celebrities that feature on sat nav devices including Roger Moore, Ozzy Osbourne and Snoop Dogg.

A driver had a lucky escape in Leeds after a cow leap a fence and ploughed into his car. The driver, Richard Gould escaped with some minor cuts and bruises, which is more than can be said for his Citroen C5 which was written off with extensive damage to the front and a broken wheel; the cow was pronounced dead at the scene.

It is thought that the cow jumped the fence as it tried to escape from the farmer and landed in the road in front of Mr Gould. He told the press “I was driving along when a cow jumped out and landed on my bonnet. It had hurdled a three-foot high fence and hit the front of my car”. Adding that, “I had no time to brake and my car veered to the other side of the road. I was very lucky that nothing was coming in the opposite direction”.

Mr Gould was given a breath test for alcohol at the scene by police officers; the test came back negative.

A South African truck driver who was stopped at a routine checkpoint in Cape Town was found to only have one leg and was using his 11 year old son to operate the clutch. Police found out that the 39 year old man had had his leg amputated in 1996 after he was shot, but continued to keep driving his delivery truck with the help of his son.

Police also said that the man, who has not been named, had an out of date drivers permit that only allowed him to drive automatic vehicles. After investigating the truck, it was found that it had an expired licence, a broken seat belt and a broken parking brake.

Cape Town’s chief traffic inspector Merle Lourens told the press that, “He won’t be allowed to drive, but he shouldn’t have been driving in the first place”.

The driver has been fined 1,000 rand (approximately £90).

Toyota has unveiled a new in-car social networking service for its motorists called Toyota Friend. In collaboration with Salesforce.com, the software allows owners to receive Twitter-styled messages from their car about maintenance issues and low batteries in their electric and hybrid vehicles.

Motorists can also communicate with Toyota dealerships and customer services through cloud-computing software and keep in touch with friends and family through Facebook and Twitter.

The software will be released with all new electric and hybrid cars next year in Japan, but the service is expected to be available to other markets such as the UK shortly after if it proves successful.

President of the Toyota Motor Corporation Akio Toyoda said, “Social networking services are transforming human interaction and modes of communication. The automobile needs to evolve in step with that transformation. I am always calling for Toyota to make ever-better cars. The alliance that we announce today is an important step forward in achieving that goal.”

This news comes just over a week since Toyota announced that it was partnering with Microsoft to install internet connectivity to its vehicles.

A Venezuelan bus driver has become the first person in the country to be banned from driving for speeding. The 41-year-old man was caught speeding in his bus that was overcrowded and missing one of its rear wheels.

The law authorising officials to ban drivers and suspend licences was first introduced in 2008, but until now has not been enforced. Police chief Luis Fernandez told the press, “It is important to emphasise that this is a totally new act; for the first time in Venezuela we are suspending a driving license, for 12 consecutive months.”

Venezuela is notorious for its lackadaisical driving laws and high volume of traffic; this is attributed to the low price of petrol with the average price to fill a tank around 70p.

The government has announced new plans giving police the power to impose fines for careless driving as part of a strategy to make roads safer. Motorists would face a fine of £80 and three points on their licence for careless driving, with offences including tail-gating, undertaking and cutting other motorists up.

Currently offenders are prosecuted through the courts, taking up a lot of money and resources, but the new plan isn’t without its critics. They say that the new plan is too simplistic.

The Department for Transport also said that it would crackdown on drink-driving and drug-driving and close loopholes that allow people to escape charges. Drivers who have been disqualified will need to be retrained and in some cases made to retake the driving test before they get their licences back.

The courts would also be encouraged to use their powers to confiscate vehicles for more serious offences.

The new rules are set to be introduced in 2012 and cover the whole of England, Scotland and Wales.

A man has survived after his car plunged 200ft off the south rim of the world famous Grand Canyon in the US state of Arizona. The driver, a 21 year old unnamed man told park rangers that he managed to free himself from the wreckage after the accidental crash on Monday afternoon, and climbed to the top of the cliff to seek help.

The man eventually flagged down a passing tourist and was treated for non-life threatening injuries. Park officials were notified and later found the car lodged against a tree 200ft below the Canyons rim.

Park officials are investigating the incident and said that they have no plans to remove the stricken car. It was a luck escape for the 21 year old driver, as a National Park spokeswoman said that around 10ft after the tree that had stopped the car there was another precipice.

New York taxi driver Mohammed Alam got more than he bargained for when he picked up investment banker John Belitsky and his friend Dan Wuebben. Instead of a cross town fare, the two decided to do something ‘magical’ and asked Mr Alam how much it would be to take them to Los Angeles, a 2448 mile trip.

The $5,000 (around £3,000) drive took six days to complete with a stop off in Las Vegas where the two friends won $2,000. To document the trip, Mr Belitsky used the popular social networking site Twitter, but has not said how they plan to get back to New York.

A local New York news blog has calculated that if the taxi meter was running for the whole trip it would of cost nearly $17,000 (around £10,000).