A Dec. 23 Associated Press report misrepresents Pennsylvania NOW's auto insurance lawsuit as seeking "greater emphasis on mileage when setting rates." Wrong. The lawsuit wants mileage measured, not "emphasized." An odometer is either read or it isn't. And consumers may well ask why insurers do not read car odometers as they do some commercial vehicle odometers.

For cars, insurers simply predict the average mileage that will be driven and then charge all cars in a class the same premium. They do not adjust premiums at the end of the policy period although some cars were driven hardly at all while others far exceeded the class average mileage. If power companies were "regulated" that way, they could ignore electric meters and charge all households the same price without measuring how much electricity each actually used.

Why should the National Organization for Women want insurers to read odometers? Because women at all ages average half men's mileage and accidents. As a group, women pay twice as much per mile as men for insuring their cars under the adult unisex pricing currently applied to 80 percent of cars. As individuals, all below-average mileage drivers in each price class are forced to subsidize the higher cost of insuring those who drive above the average mileage.

Price discrimination is prohibited by insurance law. On behalf of adult women who have always been overcharged as a group the way young women soon will be, NOW's lawsuit demands that the state enforce the law that requires insurers to measure the protection they sell. Equality is paying for what you get and getting what you pay for. And for insuring cars, that requires odometer measurement, not "emphasis."