My two previous entries combined to remind me of my journey to Hanover last week. With some bulky video kit to get to the show, I volunteered to drive there from Sussex in the latest Ford Transit, partly to celebrate its success as International Van of the Year. You can read the full story in Commercial Motor on October 12, but a key part of the 1,100 mile round trip was the ability to travel on parts of the German autobahn system as fast as was safely possible.

Considerable distances were driven at around 100mph and, guess what, the world didn't stop and nobody died. In fact the standard of driving, in particular lane discipline and generally higher levels of awareness, were so far ahead of the UK that it felt safer than driving around the M25 at half the speed. And the vans's reserves of performance, handling and braking, together with its newly standardised ESP, added to the security.

By coincidence, the road accident figures published today reveal that inattention is a far greater cause of accidents than speed. Austria is currently trialling 160km/h on suitable bits of its motorway network, but I'm just afraid that the decades of 70mph since the days of the Ford Anglia have deskilled UK drivers so far that we can never safely increase our limits.