Presenter Jeremy Vine...

Presenter Jeremy Vine asked me on air if it"s ethically and morally acceptable for a motorist with nine points on their licence to allow a friend to take the rap for their latest speeding misdemeanour. As far as I"m concerned, ethics and morality are important, but not as much as the fact that drivers can and do go to jail for deception.

It"s up to you. Maybe you think you"ll like prison food and picking up the soap in the communal showers. But my advice is the police and the courts are better at identifying who"s driving - and who"s not - than ever before.

Blatantly lying to the authorities is a dangerous game to play. If you win, you might avoid three points. If you lose, you might go inside, be fired from your job, separated from your family and end up with a proper criminal record that you will never live down.

Deciding to lie to the police and the courts is one thing; being naturally confused, ignorant, forgetful or disorganised is another. I don"t think a driver can personally be punished for a speeding offence allegedly committed in their car several weeks or months ago. They may genuinely not be able to remember what they were doing at the time, nor who was in the vehicle. The onus shouldn"t be on an individual to remember where his car was at a particular moment, and whether he or somebody else was in control.

Instead, the prosecuting authorities should provide irrefutable evidence that a particular individual was behind the wheel when an offence allegedly took place. And incidentally, just because somebody makes an allegation against you or your car, it doesn"t necessarily follow that it is valid, right or proper. The innocent until proven guilty rule still applies in Britain. Doesn"t it?

I also took part in a Bank Holiday Monday programme on Radio 4 called I Want To Give Up Driving, in which a man called Dave Cohen tried to convince me that people should try to follow his example and live without a car. My job was to offer a counter-argument. But I didn"t really need to. Without prompting, Dave freely admitted: "Walking is boring, isn"t it? I"m a car addict. There"s always a good reason to take the car, isn"t there? I love my car. It"s handy isn"t it? The thing about driving is that it"s so fantastically convenient."

When he talked enthusiastically about "looking at some other ways of managing without a car", he revealed he"d actually hired one, tried to form a car-sharing scheme and had driven a motor running on alternative fuel. All this was a bit bizarre from a man at the centre of a programme called I Want To Give Up Driving. Did Dave win his personal battle to make every one of his days a no-car day? "Like all recovering addicts I have good days and I have bad days. Tomorrow will be a good day!" he admitted on air.

At least Dave conceded that he"d failed miserably in his attempts to stop driving. If only the hypocritical car-hating politicians and holier-than-thou professional environmentalists were equally honest and confess motoring is a huge part of everyday life. Be my guest and live without a car if you want to. Just don"t expect the 50 million men, women and children who rely on them daily in Britain to follow your example.