I am writing with a plea to all road users: if you see a VW, Seat or Audi crawling along at some inexplicably slow pace, please thank your lucky stars it isn’t you.

Let the driver find a place to pull over and – yes, this is the solution – switch their car

off and on again. Although ­sometimes this only works for a few hundred yards.

Having done what we thought was the right thing ­following the Volkswagen emissions scandal and got our cars updated and been assured it would make absolutely no difference to miles per gallon, performance or resale values, some of us now find we are in possession of a vehicle with a mind of its own that will ­sometimes just decide to go into ‘limp’ mode and not let you go above 25mph, 35mph or some other figure it decides on.

The dealers are swamped and the parts to fix the problem are in short supply. Courtesy cars are even rarer.

Please have patience and lots of sympathy.

Clare McKillop

South Milton