The insurance mafia does more than just force us to buy what it sells (using the government to apply the forcing). It also forces the car companies to force us to buy “safety.” Here’s the latest example:

The insurance mafia created an entity called the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which sounds a lot like the Federal Reserve in that both sound quasi-governmental but in a benign kind-of-way. “Institute” has a vaguely academic/credentialed smack to it. What the IIHS is, in fact, is the PR arm of the insurance mafia. It markets “safety” – via its Top Safety Picks – which lauds new vehicles that are designed in accordance with the mafia’s desired parameters and shames those that fall short.

The insurance mafia applies pressure for all new vehicles to be ever-“safer” and increases the costs of the insurance every car owner is forced to buy, if the car they own is not a Top Pick. More finely, it increases the costs even more if it is not a Top Pick.

A fact not often discussed is that even if a vehicle is a Top Pick, tit does not mean lower insurance costs. The mafia has been increasing everyone’s costs – including people who have “safe” cars and faultless driving records, no tickets or claims – which shows us that being a “good driver” doesn’t matter, in terms of what we pay for what were forced to buy.

It is likely, going forward, that the mafia is going to make insurance punitively unaffordable for people who own vehicles that lack the latest “safety” equipment. Their argument will be that such vehicles are riskier to drive – an assertion they can make based on generalities and statistics rather  than specifics, just as they already do with regard to drivers who they claim are more likely to get into an accident based upon their having been ticketed for speeding or even just for not “buckling up.” It does not matter that individual driver hasn’t gotten into an accident – even if he’s been driving for decades. The insurance mafia having the power to demand (and get) more money just by asserting that a given driver – or vehicle – is less “safe.”

This will nudge drivers out of whatever they are driving – and into something “safer.” That is, newer – and so equipped with the very latest driver pre-emption technology.

Speaking of which . . .

The IIHS announced the other day that it will require Top Safety Picks (beginning with the 2027 model year) to be fitted with intelligent speed assistance (ISA). The term is as fatuous and dishonest as being “asked” to pay taxes. ISA is a speed limiter that is intelligent in the sense that it is not merely a limiter that prevents a vehicle from being driven faster than a pre-set speed. Many commercial vehicles such as over-the-road trucks and school busses have had that for decades. This is different. ISA knows what the speed limit is on whatever road you’re driving on and adjusts the vehicle’s speed to no faster than that.

Initially, of course, it will be sold to people as merely warning them that they are exceeding whatever the speed limit is, via a chime/icon-flashing in the main gauge display. That “technology” is already embedded in most 2025 model year vehicles, incidentally. What the IIHS wants is a fully enabled version of that “technology” that makes tit impossible to “speed” in a vehicle so equipped. Bad enough. Worse is that IIHS – and the government, which amounts to the same coercive entity – will then go after vehicles that are not equipped with ISA. Perhaps the government will require they be retrofitted with ISA (in order to be legal for use on the government’s roads). The insurance mafia, for its part, will charge owners of vehicles that do not have ISA exorbitant premiums, forcing them to stop driving them.

There’s more.

IIHS also says it will also require its Top Picks “to have impairment detection devices by 2030 or sooner, which will monitor driver intoxication and impairment and prevent anyone with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08% or higher from driving.”

Italics added.

This is much more than just a passive alcohol detection system to prevent “drunks” from driving (by presuming everyone is  a “drunk” until proven otherwise, a logical elaboration of using sobriety checkpoints to establish the same in a more scattershot manner). If it were only a passive “drunk” driver detection system, why add “and impairment”? Well, because “impairment” will be defined as driving outside the acceptable parameters, as for example failing to use a turn signal before changing lanes (perfectly reasonable if there are no other cars nearby) or changing lanes aggressively (that is, quickly rather than glacially). Same goes for braking – and accelerating – too aggressively. Such driving will be considered “impaired” and synonymous with “drunk” driving. When either is detected, the car will take action to prevent the driver from driving. It will either not start at all (“drunk” driving detection, which is apt to be defined as any trace of alcohol whatsoever) or it will stop – and pull itself over – when it detects “impairment.”

The IIHS announcement is an exampled of the push-pull technique that’s used to pressure the vehicle manufacturers into embedding such things as ISA and “drunk/impaired” driving detection systems in forthcoming vehicles. Those that lack these “safety” features will not earn Top Pick status and those who own them will incur higher-than-others insurance costs, to nudge them into “safer” cars.

Of course, the safest car of all is one you don’t drive at all – and that’s the road we’re heading down. But has the mafia considered that when we get there, it will no longer be able to mulct drivers – because there aren’t any of those around anymore?

. . .

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