Those of us who love driving, and even those who don’t but use their cars simply out of necessity, are really feeling the pain at the moment in the UK.  We seem to be paying more for almost every aspect of driving and there’s little that we can do about it.

Average cost of fuel per year = £2,500. When the author started driving in 2000, unleaded petrol cost 75.6p per litre in southern England.  Now it is getting on for double that.  The last time I filled up it was 136.9p, up 13 pence per litre on April last year.  The rise in petrol prices seems to be on a fairly steady upwards trajectory, with no sign of slowing any time soon.

Average cost of insurance = £892 (fully comp). Despite being relatively stable for some years, the cost of car insurance has suddenly shot up.  Whilst this has been blamed on the no win no fee culture by some, the situation is really far more complex than car accident claims.  For example, the rise in female drivers’ premiums is mostly down to the new European legislation that states there can be no sex discrimination when it comes to assessing risk and pricing premiums.

Average road tax = £180 (estimated). Road tax is calculated based on the amount of CO₂ a car produces and unrelated to the amount of miles driven.  Those cars that emit the least pay nothing for their road tax but few cars fall into this category.  Although there appears to be no well published research into what the average car owner pays, it looks to be about £180.

MOT = £54.85. Assuming a vehicle is over 3 years old and kept in good condition, the cost of having an MOT done on an average passenger car is set at £54.85.  Some garages do run special offers on this though so it is possible to pay less.

Average servicing = £180. The cost of servicing once a year varies wildly around the UK and depends on whether an independent or official manufacturer garage is used, as well as the type of service conducted.   This cost does not include any work done.

There are no doubt other factors to take into account – repairs, oil, new tyres, windscreen wash, parking, not to mention depreciation – but as far as keeping a car running and legal, the cost of driving in 2011 looks to total £3,800 per year.

The fact that women pay less for their car insurance than their hairier equivalents is one of those things that has just become accepted in recent times and we’ve had companies like Diamond and Sheila’s Wheels doing good business out of this anomaly.

Car insurance equality 

We all know, traditionally, why this has been the case.

Statistically speaking, men have more road accidents than women. That cannot be denied. When things do go wrong, the crashes in which women are involved tend to be low-speed knocks and parking misjudgments. When men have a crash, they tend to do it in style.

However the ECJ evidently thinks that that is no reason to apply broad-brush differentiation between male and female drivers. Now, a driver’s sex should not be the most prominent criterion when insurers are assessing who is more likely to be knocking on their door to tell them they’ve just decimated a small village.

Usually the focal point for grumbling and muttering, the Court has endeared itself to millions of male motorists by paving the way for their premiums to come down, on the basis that to discriminate on the grounds of sex is fundamentally wrong.

One wonders whether this means that male drivers will notice a decrease in premiums, or whether the insurance companies will make themselves even less popular than they currently are and merely charge everyone the same premium across the board.

Insurers have bemoaned that they are not making any money, what with personal injury claimsallegedly hanging them out to dry (although their frequency has only increased in line with the numbers of cars on the road) and the rise of ‘crash for cash’ schemes.

The latter involves a corrupt group of individuals all working in league with each other to make money from insurers by causing deliberate car crashes and then milking the system for every penny it’s worth.

These delightful, upstanding members of society tend to drive slowly until their unsuspecting victim, wondering what’s going on, zooms up to the back of their vehicle and then proceeds to slam into the back of it. How did that happen? Well, it goes something like this:

Scammer disconnects brake lights, stands on brake pedal, causes accident, claims for vehicle damage, personal injury (verified by crooked doctor) and fraudulently pockets lots of money, passing the cost on to insurance company’s customers.

If women want equality, they have to take the rough with the smooth.  Equality across the board. Unless, we are smart and sensible enough to realise men and women are actually different and better and worse at different things, now there’s a thought!

Power comes from an updated version of the standard car’s 5.2-liter V10 engine with a modified ECU that helps lift output from 525HP and 530 Nm (390.91 lb-ft) to 560HP and 540 Nm (398.28 lb-ft) of torque at 6,500 rpm. An R tronic sequential manual transmission and Audi’s quattro permanent all-wheel drive system with a strong rear-wheel bias completes the setup.