Plight of the suburban driver. For, in all honestly, it is fair to call the act ‘driving’ at all? Would it not be better suited to the term ‘accident avoidance’?

Prime Minister Manuel Valls was quoted as saying “In France, we have long favored the diesel engine. This was a mistake, and we will progressively undo that, intelligently and pragmatically.”

I think we should start pushing the boundaries of car design, start begging for a little more from our everyday embarrassing-to-be-seen-driving people-carrying vans, start asking why family cars have to be boring cars.

As car enthusiasts we want not only to control our own vehicles, but we want all the other drivers to do so too. Dashboard touch-screen interfaces and voice-command systems are here, and while they are far more distracting and far less intuitive than the old-fashioned knobs and levers, there is not likely to be any going back to the old ways.

Jeremy Mayfield was a regular in NASCAR’s top series, a five-time winner who drove for such well-known car owners as Cale Yarborough and Roger Penske. But when he failed a random drug test administered by NASCAR he was shown the door. Failing a subsequent test, he remains suspended from all NASCAR racing.

Cats can be very finicky – if the litter box is maintained like the cat version of a gas station rest room, kitty will find another place to go and that place may be the nice soft car cover or the box of NOS parts or one of the drawers in your tool cabinet.