Sheila's Wheels Come off

I am, as usual, very late to the issue, but alas life gets in the way of my witterings

I take it everybody is aware of the week-old news that insurers will no longer be able to take a person's gender into account

Now you may expect me to rail against this decision, I love to bash 'equality' with statistics and of course the statistics clearly show that men, as a group, cost more - that's a statistical truth

But I'm going to buck my own trend here, unlike say, Peter Hitchens, I do not believe that the enforcement of an equality law here is a bad thing

Yes, men cost more, but what you have to ask is - is it fair to charge the average man 60% more than a woman simply for being a man?

Surely, if he's 60% more likely to crash (or rather, claim), then yes?

While strictly speaking yes, it is cheaper to insure women as they are less likely to claim, what this really comes down to is where you draw the boundaries - why only stop at gender? You could show a difference between people with different hair colour, eye colour, height, weight, and of course skin colour - all of these features could in theory be assessed for risk

But we choose some very simple, easy to measure categories - is this fair on men?

'Because you are a man, you are more likely to crash' - well actually, for this to be true it has to be shown to be something inherent in men generally

However, we all know that this is not the case - many men are excellent drivers without a claim to their name (me included), and they are not even a minority, but we all know there are some, shall we call them 'twats', who drive like loons and write off three cars before their 18th birthday - these are the minority

Is there any link between these two types of men? Other than sharing the same chromosomal combination, no, a minority within the group force the majority to pay more because they all happen to have the same type of genitalia - as I said, it's a simple measure to use, it's easy to draw a line through sex and offer women a better deal

But it's not really fair, saying everyone of one group is more of a risk because of a small group within that, there is nothing to stop them drawing lines around any of the features I outlined (except practicality) - imagine saying 'black people claim more, therefore black people pay more'

Could be a perfectly true statement (almost certainly there's a difference either way), but it's not done, and nor would it be done, I expect, if women were shown to cost more - that would be discrimination, because quite frankly, it is, as it's pre-judging you based on your particular grouping

The only way around this is, as Hitchens junior remarked, is that men and women are different, racially you can't get away with that argument even if the stats bear out because races are considered equal, but the assumption is made that men's brains are hardwired to be more dangerous...because of the actions of a minority, which is exactly the same principle that leads to racial stereotyping

It means I am the same risk as Paul Gascoigne or Tony Blair, but clearly there are other factors at work - if I were a tiny minority then I could understand, but the fact is the majority are punished because we are arbitrarily put into the same box as the offenders, you may as well lump us in with murderers and paedophiles as we are far more likely to be them as well

Our sex has not been shown to be the overriding factor in the risk, some men are twats, but not all (or most) - it's just an easy, and very lazy, way of measuring us

So yes, it is discrimination and there is no reason why my gender should mean I pay hundreds more a year than my wife, mother or sister, unless you're a lazy insurer who wants to cash in on women costing less, us green eyed people would cost less too!

Why Bother with Judges?

The police are so brilliant, let's let them issue on-the-spot fines for rape, murder, negligence, no need for judges or juries in the modern world

OK, I'm being slightly melodramatic - but have you heard the quiet news that the police are to be given powers to fine you on-the-spot for dangerous driving?

Now it's one thing to be done for drink driving - that involves facts, but dangerous driving? How would you define that? Careering across the road? Mounting the kerb? Slightly swaying over a motorway line? All this and more can be added to the list if an officer is feeling particularly over-zealous, or if the police need some revenue

Because to be 'driving dangerously' is subjective - it's open for debate, and there are no strict rules, like having a blood alcohol level, so the police can do what they like

This is why we have courts! To ensure justice, it is not the police's job to sentence people, the police respond by saying:

"it can result in a reduction in the amount of time that police officers spend completing paperwork and attending court"

No sh*t, Sherlock, taking the courts out of the legal system will always reduce the time spent in court...there does have to be a logical point at which you can't cut public services, otherwise we should just be cutting the police and courts completely

It would be much quicker to simply accuse suspects of murder and then stick them in prison, none of that gathering evidence or trial business - I sound mad, but it's the same logic, giving the police this level of power undermines the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary

I seriously can't believe Labour would actually do this, giving police free rein over the roads is ridiculous even by their standards, and I haven't even gone into how they'll use it for revenue (there's that independent judiciary thing again)

I'm angry...rahhh!

Round the Bend

I was a bit steamed when I first the resurgence of Labour's plans to cut speed limits

These popped up late last year and I assumed they were just filler, but the idea to reduce the national speed limit to 50mph still lingers

Although my anger has somewhat subsided as I can find little that notes the drop in the national speed limit, only this brief mention in the Mail

The BBC focused on the urban areas and schools, the Guardian put up a ridiculous survey and are only interested in the 20mph bit, so I'm not sure any more

I personally find the 50mph on rural roads idea ridiculous - the assumption that speed is somehow the primary factor in accidents is nonsense

Now I am going to use anecdotal evidence, because frankly that's all this needs unless someone proves to me that all those rural crashes happen as a result of people travelling between 50 and 60mph, and because I live within a vast array of rural roads

Long and windy, deserted, stretches of road where crashes are infrequent (on a road by road basis, rather than the thousands of miles nationally) - the sort of road where you can put your foot down and blast along at 80, or that can force you to go round tight, blind corners at 30

This is true of the roads that I drive along every day - you cannot travel down these roads at 60 the whole way, on certain stretches I 'could' go faster because I know the road and have good visibility, while at certain points if I was going at 60 I would fly off into a fen

And this is the idiotic part - neither can you travel round these tight bends at 50mph - you would still come off the road, I can think of one particular stretch near my pub where there are those black and white arrows to warn you, I always slow down to 40 to go round there, and that's at the limit of what you should be doing - at 50 you would career onto the wrong side of the road and probably hit those useful signs

Now I'm pretty sure that most drivers know to slow down (it also says 'SLOW' on the road), without being forced to watch the speed limit - they are, on the whole, good at avoiding crashing, the last fatality on that bend was over ten years ago, and were you to be at 50mph and crash you still probably be done for dangerous driving

So what exactly would a 50mph speed limit on such roads achieve? - I have sat behind many weekend drivers who drive at 40 and 50mph on those roads, waiting for a chance to overtake and drive properly - it is simply too slow (assuming conditions are fine) for any normal driver to handle - 60 is an ideal speed for much of the road, at points it isn't but is it worth changing it all to 50, especially when even that isn't appropriate for those parts? By the same logic we may as well make the whole road system 20mph to be on the safe side

Or how about dropping the limit to 30mph at the bend I described - would it be worth it? Would it even save a life? And how would you enforce it over a stretch of about 100 metres on a road that probably only gets 30 cars an hour at best? Personally I'd be worrying about 'speeding' rather than focusing on driving appropriately for the conditions

A degree of common sense is required here - by all means target the black spots, but I'd love to know how they intend to police the bulk of rural roads - the usage is low, and there's no way the police or speed cameras could adequately cover the huge stretches of empty road across our countryside and so if they did it would be grossly inefficient compared to policing our motorways and major A-roads

But I will hold fire for now, until I get a whiff of the national speed limit actually changing to 50mph