Once you've passed your test, got your young driver car insurance, got your car through its MOT and up to date with its road tax, you would think all your driving worries were sorted right? Sadly not. Did you know your car is likely to be crawling with all kinds of potentially harmful bacteria?
Do you eat your drive-through off the dashboard or your kebab off the passenger seat? If you do, you may think twice before doing it again after reading this. As a regular in-car-muncher, I was revolted to learn that the inside of your car can be just as dirty as your toilet seat, which is enough to make anyone feel car sick.
The typical car has 283 different types of bacteria in every square centimetre of car space according to research carried out by microbiologists from Aston University. The dirtiest part of the car was found to be the gear stick which on average is home to 356 germs per square centimetre. One car boot in a random search was found to have 850 bacteria per square centimetre and some were even found to have traces of poo in the upholstery. Eww!
Not surprisingly, drivers of children and pets were found to have the highest amount of germs in their cars, and were found to carry the more harmful types of bacteria.
Anthony Hilton, director of Biology and Biomedical Science at Aston University, said, "Some cars, particularly those regularly carrying young children and animals, play host to potentially harmful germs."
Older cars were also found to be more grubby then newer models, either because their owners have given up caring too much about their cleanliness or because the layers of dirt and grime have had more time to fester and build up over the years.
Many of those who took part in the research admitted that they let their car get in a much dirtier state than they would ever let their house fall into.
If I'm honest, I used to easily fall into the one in six people that have a car full of chocolate bar wrappers, festering sandwich crusts and prehistoric drinks bottles. However, as the proud owner of a new-ish car, I am trying my very hardest to keep it pretty clean and after hearing that my car could even be home to bugs like the superbug MRSA, I think I will try even harder.
Encouraged by my clean-freak boyfriend, when I first got my new car I would tackle it daily with a dust buster in one hand and alcoholic wet wipes in the other. However, having had the car nearly two months now, my daily cleaning routine has already become weekly and no doubt will soon become monthly. However after doing the research for this article, my motivation has been re-ignited and I will take to my car cleaning with a new Kim and Aggy-like fervour, (at least for the next week or two until I get bored of it again.)
In a slightly obscure way, the germs in my car could almost be seen as a metaphor for young person's car insurance; there's loads of young driver car insurance companies teeming all over the place and like the bacteria in my car, some will help you and some of them will do you more harm than good.