In poor weather you expect the signs to carry useful information; you don’t want people slowing to read a “nag” message.

High mileage drivers for sure benefit. Non drivers are worse off. It is true that non-drivers contribute indirectly towards fuel duty on goods and services but that amount is infinitesimal compared to their other financial interactions with the state.

A change in fuel duty likely has zero net effect for someone driving an average number of miles. A fuel duty increase sees that person paying more at the pump but this is balanced by better funded public services and/or decreases in other tax.

So only individuals (and companies) driving more than average will benefit financially from this change. If you’re driving less than average, cheaper petrol might sound attractive but the total amount you’ll save is less than you’ll lose via other taxation or via the poorer quality of public servces available to you, e.g. NHS.

My concern is that if you go on cruise control (say 68mph), get in lane 2, switch on that little gadget that keeps you in lane, you can relax and possibly pay less attention to the road – after all speed and direction are now under control and people should not pull out in front of you nor cut in in front of you …

I suspect that there have been a number of accidents (such as rear-end shunts or collisions due to not responding to someone else changing lanes) because the driver is on “auto-pilot”. However, I have never seen any statistics – I doubt accident investigators are able to check whether features like cruise control were on immediately prior to a collision. Perhaps we can see whether cars with cruise control etc. fitted have more of a certain type of accident than similar cars without.

If people genuinely become less attentive as technology takes over, you need the more advanced technology as well – such as automatic distance control, safe-zone scanning and inter-vehicle signalling – plus an alarm to wake the driver when approaching his exit.

Some electronics (e.g. ABS, rear parking sensors) improve driving abilities and are relatively uncontroversial. Others such as cruise control or lane monitoring can take over some driving functions – possibly causing drivers to drive with less attention. In these situations full “auto-pilot” may indeed be safer than the partial auto-pilot that is “creeping up on us”.

Unfortunately there is a large cost and technology gap between partial and full auto-pilot. The latter may also require all vehicles to carry some equipment and for all(?!) roads to have some level of technology (a minimum of reflective kerb, lane and junction marking).

If the government is going to struggle to get us to replace our FM car radios with DAB radios, I don’t think they stand a hope of compelling us to install auto-pilot type technology.