Why I’ll be hanging on to my smoky outdated jalopies, says QUENTIN LETTS
Mister Toad and, for that matter, the late Harold Macmillan would be horrified. Cars are about to measure our driving skills. Renault has announced that its new models will soon rate our motoring abilities out of a score of 100.
An onboard computer will deduct marks for various misdemeanours such as lane-jumping, burning too much rubber, heavy braking and ‘not paying enough attention’.
Drive too close to that Sunday-afternoon crawler in front of you – while quite possibly beeping your horn and bawling ‘get out and milk it, mate!’ – and you will lose marks. Screech up to a roundabout and take the first exit with a wheel or two off the ground?
Tut, tut. Renault’s Safety Score and Safety Coach products will clock your bad behaviour and will reprimand you with ‘nul points’, or something like that, at the end of your journey.
Just look at how Labour imposed 20mph limits in much of Wales and you can see the political direction of travel
Sensible way to improve driving standards or an outrageous assault on our freedoms? Opinions will vary. Mind you, if it stops people dawdling along in the middle lane on motorways, even the most red-blooded libertarian might be prepared to concede that it is not entirely a bad idea. And yet there is something sinister to the idea.
In due course, though they are not admitting this at present, it is entirely possible that your insurance company will be told how much, or how little, you have scored. Some insurance companies already insert black-box devices in customers’ cars to measure driving styles.
Who knows, word on our driving scores may also be passed to ‘the authorities’. After last week’s election result, those authorities are going to be in no mood for impertinence from free-spirited Nigel Mansells. Just look at how Labour imposed 20mph limits in much of Wales and you can see the political direction of travel. If we can put it like that.
When Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, the by-then elderly Harold Macmillan acquired a car which, as was then a novelty, had warning lights and pingers. ‘This car makes a noise if you don’t fasten your seat belt,’ complained Harold in his creaky drawl. ‘Lights start flashing if you don’t close the door. It’s a very bossy car.’
He therefore christened it Mrs Thatcher. It was a good joke but you wonder what Macmillan would have called Renault’s promised machines of 2024 and beyond. Chairman Mao, perhaps. Or Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. She’s always bleating at everyone what to do, after all.
Sure enough, Renault’s invention has been designed to comply with new European safety regulations which demand that all new-registration motor cars must have Intelligent Speed Assistance. This will tell drivers when they are exceeding the speed limit. Steering wheels will vibrate and accelerator pedals will push back if drivers go too fast.
At this point the politically-savvy reader will note that we voted to leave the European Union eight years ago, and that Boris Johnson succeeded in extracting us from its gloop in 2020.
But once an international car manufacturer has designed a car to comply with EU or American rules, it sells that car elsewhere and the rest of us have to like it or lump it. We all get whacked by their maddening nanny-statism, even though we mercifully are no longer part of their club.
Won’t we be able to switch off the blasted computer? Apparently not. Although it will be possible to reprogramme it at the start of each journey, it will then revert to its default (ie finger-wagging) setting for the next trip. Deactivating it for good will not be possible, just as we are not meant to deactivate a car’s mileometer.
As a lifelong driver of smoky old jalopies, I am not unaccustomed to them starting to rattle a bit on the motorway. In my elderly Nissan Micra it normally happens around 65mph. The engine screams a bit, too. Sounds like a Luftwaffe Stuka.
Renault has announced that its new models will soon rate our motoring abilities out of a score of 100
That vibration with my cars is normally because the wheels are misaligned, the chassis has been bent out of shape by past prangs or because the tyres have a slow puncture (an habitual experience in pothole-ridden Herefordshire, where we live). I’m not sure I particularly like the idea of a computer being responsible for shaking the steering wheel.
It is one thing to have a spouse complaining when I drive her to Ross-on-Wye – Mrs Letts has formed the impression over the years that I am an over-enthusiastic pilot of her bashed-up Vauxhall Insignia – but it seems a quite different matter to allow an automatic machine to intervene with one’s driving.
To be honest, it sounds dangerous. If they are really worried about our attention levels at the wheel, they should not start distracting us with various alarm systems.
As for push-back on the accelerator pedal, what if that happens when you need to put on a spurt of speed to get past an obstruction such as a hedge-cutting tractor or a parked lorry or some emergency roadworks? Sometimes you have to inject some zip to avoid oncoming traffic. If the accelerator is pushing back at you, that could be difficult, particularly for older drivers.
The motor industry is putting a positive gloss on these innovations, as are safety campaigners.
A Renault spokesman, Christian Taffin, has been quoted as saying there will be no desire to admonish fingers at drivers who record low scores. Car owners may almost become competitive to try to top the league of safe drivers.
The head of the Road Safety Foundation, one Suzy Charman, argued that drivers will be grateful to have speed limits pointed out to them by their assiduously lawful cars because it will mean they do not have to pay for speeding tickets. Well, despite being an exuberant driver – my wife, as I say, chooses different adjectives – I have a clean licence at present.
I obey speed limits. I most certainly understand the awfulness of road deaths. But I do enjoy hitting the King’s open highway, if we can still call it that. When I leap in the driving seat of a car, I still feel a thrill of liberty.
Of course, speed really is not everything. In addition to the Nissan Micra, I have a 1930 Morris. She was owned by my late father and is called The Baby. Speedy is not quite the word. Top velocity up some of the hills near us is 7mph, although downhill we have been known to hit 40mph, with the bodywork squeaking and groaning and bouncing and rattling like a Tiger Moth landing on an aircraft carrier.
The Baby does not have a synchromesh transmission. This means that when changing down a gear, one must double-declutch. Older readers will know that this involves putting your left foot on the clutch and suddenly whacking up the revs.
There is another gear-change procedure called heel-and-toe which I will not even begin to start describing safe to say that it involves footwork worthy of Rudolf Nureyev. Both that and double-declutching would give Renault’s Safety Coach computer an attack of the vapours.
Talking of vapours, The Baby emits clouds of blueish exhaust which swirl round the cabin. If I didn’t have the windscreen jacked open and the windows flung wide, I would probably expire from carbon monoxide poisoning.
One dare not think what Suzy Charman of the Road Safety Foundation would think if she saw me coming towards her in The Baby. Probably tighten her crash helmet a couple of notes and jump into the nearest ditch, perhaps. But I would almost certainly be within the speed limit, Suzy.
Renault, being French, should not forget that ‘egalite’ (freedom to you and me) is one of the great founding principles of life. There is no word yet on whether or not you will lose points for wrestling with a toffee wrapper while at the steering wheel but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Will they deduct points for driving while singing along to the car wireless? For chatting to your passengers? For tooting hello to the vicar in the street? Must computers run everything in our lives?
