What is the IAM? It’s the Institute of Advanced Motorists, a body dedicated to the advancement of driving skill by honing the constituent arts of risk assessment, responsibility and car control. It runs its own advanced driving test, and it has a place on the Government’s Motorists’ Forum. Time was when a keen, skilled driver might be proud to display the little red IAM badge on his or her car’s grille.

So what is the IAM now doing supporting the biggest threat yet to driving as a freedom-enriching, skills-enhancing activity, the most depressing development in the history of driving itself? That threat is ISA, which stands in Orwellian doublethink fashion for Intelligent Speed Adaptation.
This, if you didn’t know already, is a system being developed (using our money) by Leeds University in the UK, and elsewhere in Europe, to prevent cars from travelling over the speed limit. It uses GPS technology to match a car’s position to an electronic map on which all limits are marked, and then inhibits the throttle and applies the brakes as required. Your blood is running cold already.

On 30 December, the IAM issued an extraordinary press release: ‘Lethal rural roads need Intelligent Speed Adaptation treatment first, says IAM.’ Lethal? Our favourite roads?

It continued: ‘Potentially large reductions in road deaths and injuries – thought to be as dramatic as 29 per cent – could result from a widespread adoption of the new ISA proposals put forward today. The IAM has backed the scheme but would like to see new digital speed maps at the heart of the ISA system prioritise potentially lethal rural roads.’ It added: ‘IAM Director of Research and Policy Neil Greig cautioned that motorists may well resist initially a system that dictates how fast they can drive.’

Too right. Now the questions tumble out. What is the IAM, champion of driving-skill improvement, doing backing a scheme that brings everyone down to the lowest level of driving by numbers and disengagement from the task? Why has it shot itself so bloodily in the foot and betrayed its membership base in the process?

As for ISA itself, how can anyone think millions of frustrated drivers with their accelerator feet permanently flat on the floor is a good idea? Imagine a sudden hazard, and think how much longer it takes to move from full throttle to brake than from part throttle. Or imagine a busy motorway, all lanes full of cars travelling at identical speeds, and you’re in lane three and need to get to an exit. Motorway manoeuvres rely on speed differentials and constantly-changing gaps, so you’d be stuffed. And the assumption that all limits are always correct for every road and traffic condition, every driver and every car, is clearly fatuous.

We put all this to IAM spokesman Vince Yearley. He moved swiftly to the defensive: ‘There was an important word missing, ‘which is “override”. Perhaps we should have put that in.’

He was referring to the version of ISA, currently not favoured by EU bodies involved in its research, which allows the driver to override the system when necessary, for example to complete an overtaking manoeuvre. This could take the form of a resistance at the far end of the throttle travel akin to a kickdown switch, although what this would do to purity of throttle response doesn’t bear thinking about.

Yearley again: ‘We don’t want to see a fully-controlled version of ISA imposed on people. We’d want to see a version with override, in case there’s a situation when you need to go faster than the limit. A “discretionary” version could be offered on new cars as an option, which could be attractive to people with a lot of points on their licences.’

But if fitment is to be voluntary and use discretionary, is ISA worth any government’s effort and expense? ‘The technology will come in anyway, from Europe,’ says Yearley, chillingly. Already some Vauxhalls and BMWs can display the limit, in the latter’s case via the sat-nav database that could form the core of ISA. We’re on the slippery slope.

Our advice? Write to your MP. And join the Association of British Drivers.