ROAD pricing could be on the way. A government-funded study has suggested a toll scheme that would charge drivers up to 90 pence a kilometre (£1.45 a mile) to drive on the nation's roads.

By a quick calculation, and with the proviso that maths has never been a strong point, this works out at a bargain £261 to visit my mother. And, no, it doesn't serve me right for having a mother who lives in the south of France or even, at that price, Sydney. She lives to the south of Manchester, not far from the airport.

Much as I love my dear old mother, I think we would see a lot less of each other if this proposal came about. Never mind saving for the holiday of a lifetime, we will be accruing the pennies for a wet weekend in Knutsford.

The quoted £1.45 a mile is the top charge and one that would not apply often or to many roads, or so the theory goes.

A more likely levy is around 20 pence a kilometre, but even that would work out at more than 50 quid for the weekend, plus petrol.

This government study has been looking into the feasibility of all cars being fitted with electronic chips linked to a satellite. Every mile travelled would be tracked and a bill sent to drivers.

This is more hi-tech than the Florida highways I drove on at Easter, where dollars were handed to a person sitting in a toll booth (surely the planet's most boring job).

Occasionally, an automated toll booth would require the driver to throw the correct change into a metal funnel. If you miss, as I did, lights flash as you drive off. I spent the rest of the holiday half expecting to be stopped at the airport on departure, arrested and promptly shipped over to Guantanamo Bay.

But back to those satellites. It doesn't take much imagination to come up with a scenario in which a car that has never left York lands a bill for a triple loop of the M25.

"Our satellite recorded you driving round the M25 and it can't be wrong."

"My car's been propped been on bricks in Acomb after someone stole the wheels two months ago, so I can't have been driving on the bloody M25 three weeks ago."

"Sorry, sir, satellites never lie. Your bill is in the post."

The idea behind these suggested tolls is to reduce congestion, which makes sense up a point (that point a mile down the road you passed about two hours ago).

According to the study, congestion could be cut in half - not least because of all those people who have turned their car into a hen hoop, having realised that a two-week holiday in Cornwall would cost more than the car was worth.

If, and it's a juggernaut-sized if, the average motorist doesn't pay much more than at present, perhaps such tolls may work. Tax discs could be abolished, for example, to make way for the satellite tolls. This would end the annual visit to the Post Office to join a snaking queue and take part in the happy ritual of showing the person behind the counter all the wrong documents.

The car is a two-faced modern symbol: a shiny icon of our freedom and our entrapment. Most of us enjoy the independence cars allow. The only thing wrong with cars is everyone else has one too. Without all those other people, driving would be a delight.

Satellite tracking of cars could be one answer. The Green-inclined part of me, the side that recycles newspapers and weekend wine bottles, reluctantly thinks it may work; the harassed driver dad side, piling offspring into the estate for another trip somewhere or other, thinks "what a nerve".

Here's another thing. Do we really want a satellite and all those who operate it to know our every move?

They may be boring journeys, but they are our boring journeys, for us to do what we want with.

Updated: 11:14 Thursday, July 15, 2004