I’d understand if next time you take to the road you suddenly wonder where you’ve left your hat. But before you gents hurry for your homburgs or you ladies start flapping for your wired hats, don’t worry, you’ve not been transported back to the age of film noir, however monochrome the outside world might appear.

No, what’s happening, it would seem, is that car owners, chromatically speaking at least, are getting increasingly conservative. Gone are the weird and wild days of electric blue, hot frog green, princess pink, or, heaven forbid chameleon. Instead, these former eccentricities are being replaced by a rediscovered love for sober classicism.

By way of illustration, just ten years ago, 15 percent of all new cars were green; these days, fewer than 1 percent buy the colour. I can almost hear Kermit the Frog saying knowingly, “I told you, it ain’t easy...”

Instead, we’ve got a situation where an astonishing 76 percent of new cars are black, white or grey. In a matter of only a couple of years we’ve gone from Brave New World to Bland New World, from Technicolor back to black and white.

But before we all go prematurely and uniformly grey it is worth remembering that the colour of our cars can have an impact on the cost of our young driver car insurance. Who knows, maybe it pays to be green...

Image © disoculated via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence

Any student car insurance holders who have been tempted to drive irresponsibly are encouraged to attend the 2 fast 2 soon theatre production in Lincolnshire this month. The moving show acts as a keen reminder of the dangers which lie in wait on British roads.

A group of experienced emergency services people took responsibility for writing and directing the show, together with individuals who had either been in road accidents, or lost a close relation in a crash. The affecting stories provide an insight into the impact which irresponsible motoring can have.

After watching the show at the Drill Hall in Lincoln one young student said, “By the end of it we were all sat there like stunned and I just sat there and wanted to cry.”

A fellow student commented, “At the start they said that everything was real, all the stories they said happened and what was really striking was that at the end they had a guy talking about his daughter who was killed at the age of 18.”

It is hoped that individuals with young drivers insurance will think twice about exceeding the speed limit after seeing the show. The core safe driving messages will be reinforced by a workshop, presented to numerous schools over the coming months.

Greville Burgess, Principal Road Safety Campaigner said,  “Whilst road safety is the responsibility of everyone who use our roads, there can be no argument that young drivers, particularly those who have recently passed their driving test, are most at risk.

“2fast 2soon is an innovative way of supporting young drivers by providing them with the skills and knowledge to both enjoy their driving and reduce the risk of becoming a casualty statistic.”

Image © tompagenet via Flickr under Creative Commons Licence

Worrying research by the AA has revealed that more than 20% of road users are willing to break the law by using social network applications while driving. An astonishing 26% of drivers, including many with student car insurance, believe that it's fine to send a quick text message while stalled at traffic lights.

A large proportion of teenage drivers are willing to put at risk both their own lives and the lives of fellow road users by posting micro messages on Twitter. Many are happy to engage in some phone banter with their buddies while their car is on the move. Perhaps they aren't aware of the phone related car accidents, which have been hitting the news with increasing regularity over the past few years.

It seems quite ridiculous that individuals with young drivers insurance cannot spend a bit of time away from their mobile phones in this technological age. Our housemates might be willing to forgive us for not telling them that we'll B late 4 din dins, when they realise that lives are at stake. 

Adrian Tink, RAC Motoring Strategist, said, “We're seeing the alarming emergence of a generation of tweeting and texting 'i-Drivers' - which is very worrying.

“The best deterrent is the fear of getting caught. Without that all we have is a policy without enforcement or, to put it another way, just a piece of paper. Your licence or a life - neither is worth losing over a phone call.”

It seems unlikely that people will stop using their mobile phones while behind the wheel unless the government impose harsher penalties. There has been a steady stream of stories about this problem since the texting and phone laws were introduced way back in 2003.

Whist searching for car insurance-related news this week I came across a photograph of a new generation Mini to which somebody had affixed a pair of eyelashes.

I was about equal parts freaked-out and interested by this, so I did a little digging and discovered that lots of other people have done it, too. There is actually a Utah-based company, Turbo Style Products, that make them to order.

Turbo Style's offering is a rubberised strip of lashes, each one about five inches long, which glues onto the surface of your headlights. A set costs $25 but you have to pay extra for ‘crystal eyeliner', whatever that is.

What bothers me most about these things is the people who buy a set and then immediately post a picture online, waxing lyrical about how pretty, beautiful or stylish darling little ‘Cli-Cli' or ‘Voxi' now is. They seem to think that sticking a set of rubber pigeon spikes round their lights somehow turns their car into a cartoon character, or worse, into a person.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that a car can't have personality – but I object to the idea that it can be ‘stuck on' ten minutes out the door of the dealership. If a car is anything like a human being, its personality will develop slowly - and will largely be shaped by its faults.

Remember that first frosty morning a few months down the line when for some awful reason the car refuses to turn over? You shout and scream – there is always something urgent to do at the other end – you curse the car, you call it names? That, right there, is a personality defining moment: ‘The first time it let me down'.

How about the time you ran out of petrol? Or your first breakdown; your first jump start, your first look under the bonnet in a time of crisis? The weird noise it made, and then later you imitated, trying to make the mechanic understand what was wrong? All these are such moments: you feel angry; then cheated; then relieved; then happy – the bond between owner and machine is cemented every time.

Headlight lashes are acceptable - and look acceptable, to me - on an older car, because an old vehicle already has plenty of character. On a new one, however, they ring just as nauseatingly phoney as the flower suit on an Anne Geddes baby.

If you live in the country, there’s a chink of daylight for your hard-pressed wallet with news that the Government may be able to cut your motoring fuel costs by 5p a litre.

Although there’s lots of good things about rural life, buying petrol isn’t one of them. Not only do you have to drive long distances to find a petrol station but it’s unlikely to be one offering a discount price.

Riding to the rescue is the unlikely shape of Government - representatives have started talks to offer a pilot scheme for drivers in areas including the Hebrides, Orkney and the Shetlands in Scotland as well as the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall to reduce the amount of fuel tax they pay.

Unfortunately, the move will have to be approved by the European Commission but if Brussels approves then drivers in other areas where isolation contributes to the cost of living could also benefit through an extension of the scheme.

Although buying a tax disc is the same price wherever you live, ongoing costs for a vehicle are often higher away from towns where there is competition from a number of garages and spare parts are easily obtained.

However, there is one aspect of driving costs where country-dwellers do actually have an advantage and that’s in buying cheap car insurance.

Because fewer vehicles are stolen and there are fewer accidents, lower insurance premiums are generally available for rural residents compared with their city counterparts.