Driver aids

Reading a recent issue of Octane magazine (when you get to my age the classic mags always hold more appeal) I was struck by Rowan Atkinson's column in which he said that he never allows friends under the age of 35 to drive his older cars any more.

He argues that modern cars with their plethora of driver aids have meant we now have a generation of drivers who don't know what a car actually feels like. It's an interesting thought. If like the Grumpy Old Motorist you passed your test in the mid 1970s your first car was likely to be something basic and rear-wheel drive, like a Ford Escort -- or in my case a Vauxhall Viva. No power steering, no ABS, no traction control, not even all-round disc brakes.

Crude you might think, but you got to know the feel of the car. You knew that lightening of the steering on a slippery surface or that slither when you braked too hard and locked the wheels. Then when you graduated to your first front-drive hot hatchback in the 1980s you found out about torque steer.

Now it seems our legislators don't trust us to know how to drive so they insist on more and more nannying gizmos to make our cars "safer". The problem is that it can have the opposite effect, if you don't know what the car feels like when it's about to let go you're going to end up having a much bigger accident.

What's the solution? A couple of weeks in a Caterham for every new driver, perhaps?

More seriously we should be worried about where this is taking us in the future. The technology already exists to remotely control a car's speed based on satellite information. That's a horrifying thought. Controlling speed is a key part of the driving task, take that away and people are more likely to lose the full concentration that safe driving demands. Scarier still, knowing that they can't speed drivers are likely to keep their foot to the boards at all times, regardless of weather and traffic conditions. And let's not even think about the circumstances where a burst of extra speed might just save your life. As an interesting aside here, the government's own figures show that since mandatory speed limiters were introduced on lorries deaths of HGV drivers in accidents have increased -- go figure.

Currently our political masters don't have the will to implement this degree of control -- and would lose too much revenue in speeding fines if they did. Let's hope the day never comes when they're persuaded otherwise.

GOM