At the end of January I had the first taste of being in front of a camera in my role as IAM RoadSmart’s young driver ambassador. I was invited by Boston Advanced Motorists to join them at Listers Mini dealership in Boston. The group had organised an ‘assessed drive’ video to be created; the idea was to create a short video that demonstrates what an assessed drive involves, focussing on the stress-free element of these sessions.

There are several changes coming to the MOT test, starting on 20 May (apart from in Northern Ireland, where they have a separate MOT system). The most obvious will be a new, more elaborate way of classifying defects. Currently, each item is simply marked as Fail or Pass. In future, defects leading to the car failing the test will be categorised as Dangerous or Major.

I’m not superstitious but sometimes weird things happen that I can’t explain and I get a bit spooked. For example, one evening last week I was sitting in my favourite chair, thinking about plans for the weekend. Nothing unusual there. Suddenly I remembered that my girlfriend Kim (playing with her phone on the sofa opposite) had made some tentative plans to have lunch with a friend. “You still meeting Jen on Saturday?” I asked. At that precise moment, Kim’s phone went ‘ping’ announcing a text message from (you’ve guessed it) Jen, cancelling on lunch.

The ‘beast from the east’ left many things in its wake; poor retail sales figures, an extended skiing season in the Scottish mountains and of course lots of potholes! Even before the storms, my phone had already started ringing with local journalists looking for comments on poor road surfaces and social media was full of pictures of bathtub sized holes.

At IAM RoadSmart we talk a lot about the dangers of distraction when it comes to driving – and yes distraction plays a very large part in many accidents. Music can be both a distraction and a way of keeping the driver alert. Too loud or too high the bpm, the greater the chance the driver will go faster and less able to hear of other things around them.