Free will and cheap car insurance for women

You have a much greater chance of getting cheap car insurance if you are a safe driver - that's a well known fact, isn't it? The motor insurance industry offers cheap policies for women because they are statistically less of a risk than men; expensive policies for reckless boy-racers and the carrot dangle of a long no-claim bonus that takes a percentage of your premium for the rest of the safe motoring public. It's all supposed to make us drive with more safety in mind and therefore protect all road users from harm, whilst protecting the insurers form massive payouts.

Whichever way you look at it, we have a choice about how much we pay for our car insurance. If I were a youngster, I could wait a few years to get behind the wheel – that would save me a packet. As a (slightly) older driver, I have the choice to drive with as much attention to road safety as I can, thereby avoiding accidents and the loss of my no-claim bonus. I have a choice and I like it.

So, what would we think if we told our choices regarding driving were being taken away? Old Emmeline Pankhurst didn't hitch up her skirts and chain herself to railings just so I could have choices taken away from me. She starved herself in incarceration to win me the right to vote, to choose my government, to be heard. I don't think she'd be very impressed.

I drive how I see fit, (hopefully safely and 99.9% of the time within the law) and I'm sure the majority of drivers in the country have the same thoughts as I. We drive on roads laid by governments, at speeds that the experts deem safe. Most of us adhere to the rules and regulations and we rarely complain about it.

Roads are full, yes, we complain about that, but that's because the public transport system is woeful and it takes away our freedom of choice (never mind that it costs a packet) and I believe that most of us still value our freedom above all else.

When I decide to go from A to B, I go when I'm ready and not when an anonymous timetabler deems that I should go. In my car I am not subjected to the filthy mouths of teenage school kids discussing their underage sex-lives, or the hilarious antics of drunken city-types daring each other to complete stupidly unsafe acts of supposed heroism in the face of an overweight, middle-aged ticket collector. No, my car is my kingdom and it goes where I want it to go, when I want it to go, with my choice of in-car entertainment playing as loud as I want without it bothering anyone else going about their daily lives.

So, I'll get to the point; the object of this rant is the proposed introduction of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) on the nation's roads. (That's speed limiters to you and me.) Or, in other words, the taciturn, choking, further pervasion of Orwellian horror that would have us spied upon by eyes-in-the-sky as we drive identically home, having eaten our regulation portions of fruit and veg, so that we don't overtax the health service that we pay for every minute of every day whilst in gainful employment.

Speed limiting on the nation's roads – I'm not a fan.

ISA is little boxes in our cars that detect the speed limit for the road we are travelling on and make sure our car doesn't go over that limit. On the face of it, it sounds like a good idea doesn't it?

Except that it takes away our right to choose; how we travel, how we negotiate certain situations, how we drive. And we all know that those who choose to drive like idiots will just not fit it, or find a way to override it, so what's the point?

Reassuringly, I am not alone in my disparagement of such a motoring accessory. The Association of British Drivers (ABD) have overwhelmingly condemned the "exaggerated and unsupported" claims of the ISA final report as published in June 2008 by The University of Leeds in partnership with MIRA. The full ABD comment can be read at their website along with the ISA report.

The ABD point out that the report claims fatalities could be reduced by 42%, compared with current levels, if a non-overideable ISA was installed in all vehicles. However, a Department for Transport (DfT) 2006 report states that exceeding the speed limit was a (not the) factor in just 12% of fatal, 7% of serious and 4% of slight accidents.

ABD spokesman Nigel Humphries comments, "It should be obvious that speed limiters could not possibly prevent more accidents than those in which exceeding the speed limit is currently a factor, and in reality they would prevent fewer accidents, as other factors are involved in most cases.

"Other improvements in vehicles and roads will help reduce accidents, as they have done in the past. No one knows what changes will take place in the way we travel in the long term. To make economic predictions over a 60-year period confirms just how out of touch these ivory-tower academics are with reality."

I feel in my gut that the powers-that-be just love a bit of technological advancement and that we will have GPS spy cameras on us all in the near future. If I choose to have a black box fitted in respect of one of the cheap car insurance schemes out there that offer reduced premiums when you only drive at a certain time, then yes, that's my prerogative. But I object to being told "we will make it impossible for you to behave illegally", when I already am a law-abiding citizen.