Highway Robbers

I'm actually rather used to the concept of being fleeced by motorway service stations. For that reason I tend only to use them for the car park and the toilets. For the most part, I just find them very expensive but, having actually bought something from one today, I think they are actually trying to kill people.

I've had lots of hassles with windscreen washer fluid lately. Once upon a time, it was possible to buy a bottle of "concentrate" which could be diluted down with water to create a washer fluid that would be protected from freezing down to the desired temperature. Now, the shops selling washer fluid have cottoned on to the fact that the profit margin is much higher if they are selling, for the most part, water. Increasingly, I am finding that the lowest undiluted temperature that washer fluid will work at "undiluted" is -5C. This equates to just 10% ethanol (or similar) to 90% water. This is all well and good but, when I regularly experience temperatures lower than this, it's about as much use as a chocolate teapot (just in reverse).

In fact, it is possible to use the -5C solution in lower temperatures as long as the washer jets are given a regular squirt lest they ice up. Of course, this does mean that you go through washer fluid at a rate of knots. Today I was travelling back up home to Scotland when I ran out of washer. Needless to say, I didn't fancy driving all the way home blinded so I stopped at the service station and spent a shocking £7 for a bottle of their ready mixed "winter wash". I felt somewhat ripped off by this but I wanted to get home and went along with it. To make sure the jets didn't freeze over, once I rejoined the motorway I gave the washers a quick squirt. To my horror, the "winter wash" instantly turned to ice on my windscreen.

What I appear to have bought for my £7 is just blue soapy water. Now, had this been in the West Country I could have just written this off as straight forward highway robbery but this was in Scotland and resulted in me making an emergency stop on the motorway hard shoulder to scrape my screen clean. I've heard of "unfit for purpose" but this is actually plain dangerous and nowhere on the bottle does it actually say what the freezing point is.

I really think something should be done about this but, in the meantime, I have found a solution. I've enhanced the washer solution with a bottle of meths.