Hemma Visavadia

Hemma Visavadia focuses on how transport policy, motoring regulation and insurance shape the everyday experience and costs facing drivers and consumers. She works as a digital motoring reporter at GB News, covering car insurance, regulation, traffic updates, ULEZ, the latest car models and electric vehicles, alongside wider travel and transport issues. Her reporting draws on several years’ experience across financial services and specialist consumer sectors, giving her coverage a strong grasp of both policy detail and the commercial pressures behind it.

Motoring rules, enforcement and driver impact

Much of Visavadia’s work concentrates on changes to road rules and enforcement, and how they affect specific groups of motorists. She reports on proposals for compulsory eyesight tests for drivers over 70, explaining how new rules would require proof of recent eye tests every three years at licence renewal.

In a later piece she returns to the same theme from the perspective of older motorists, highlighting support among elderly drivers for annual mandatory eyesight checks as part of broader efforts to “restore order” on the roads.

She covers the systems that sit behind driving licences, including extensive reporting on medical licence delays that leave thousands of drivers unable to return to the road for months. In that work she details criticism of the licensing authority in Parliament and draws on committee reports to show how people who disclosed medical conditions are being held back by outdated processes.

She also follows the enforcement side of motoring, documenting how a national dashcam portal has led to tens of thousands of videos of alleged dangerous driving being sent to police, with submissions up by more than 20 per cent in a single year and more than 215,000 clips uploaded since launch.

Local road safety measures and speed management are another recurring strand. Visavadia reports on a major speed limit reduction on a key road, explaining how a council cut the limit from 40mph to 30mph and then used survey data showing average speeds dropping by 14 per cent to argue that the change had improved safety.

Across these stories she consistently connects new rules, enforcement tools and administrative systems to the drivers they affect, whether vulnerable learners being extorted for test slots, older motorists facing extra checks, or licence holders stuck off the road.

Electric vehicles, infrastructure and autonomous technology

Visavadia devotes substantial attention to the transition to electric and autonomous vehicles, often combining technical detail with policy and consumer sentiment. She has reported that electric vehicles are more likely to fail MOT tests than many drivers expect, using expert data to show a significant 25 per cent difference in pass rates between some EV and hybrid models and highlighting the impact of heavier vehicles on failure rates. Her coverage of EV infrastructure examines what she describes as a postcode lottery, drawing on insights from a charging data provider to show that while the UK now has around 120,000 public charging points, provision is complex and uneven, with growth outside London lagging behind net zero ambitions.

She frequently uses interviews with industry leaders to explore how policy and messaging affect uptake of new technology.

In one piece she speaks with a senior sales executive at a major car manufacturer, detailing his argument that the industry needs to rethink how it communicates about electric vehicles as a forthcoming ban on new petrol and diesel cars gradually changes the composition of the fleet. In another, she reports analysis forecasting that electric vehicles are on track to make up more than half of all vehicles on UK roads by 2034, framing this as a decisive shift away from petrol and diesel. She also covers public attitudes toward autonomous vehicles, reporting survey findings that four out of five drivers refuse to purchase a self-driving car within a year, a rejection rate of 84 per cent that she presents as a serious obstacle to the government’s technology agenda.

Taxation and cost pressures sit alongside technology in her motoring coverage. Visavadia has written about new taxes catching petrol and diesel drivers off guard, particularly where older vehicles face the highest charges, reinforcing her focus on the financial consequences of policy changes for owners of legacy cars.

Together, these pieces show a reporter who tracks the EV and autonomous transition not as an abstract trend but through its testing regimes, infrastructure gaps, marketing challenges and the resistance of motorists asked to bear the risks and costs.

Insurance, risk and financial services

Visavadia’s motoring work is underpinned by a deeper specialism in insurance and financial services. Her author biography notes that she writes about car insurance and regulation as part of her role at GB News and that she has previously covered financial services, food, retail and technology for specialist magazines and consumer sites. In the trade press she serves as a senior reporter across financial services, producing regular coverage on claims, regulation and emerging technology in the insurance sector.

Her recent insurance articles include examinations of how agentic AI can be used to reduce friction along the claims journey while cutting costs and improving service. She reports on insurers adapting windscreen cover as advanced vehicle technologies create new risks, and on how extreme weather could turn pothole-related claims into a year-round challenge for insurers facing higher vehicle damage and more complex liability investigations. She has covered Swedish pet insurance models that use AI and automated claims handling, arguing that they could streamline the UK claims process, and has profiled a pet insurer expanding its UK presence through new partnerships.

Consumer protection and climate risk also feature prominently. Visavadia reports on contents insurance being flagged by a parliamentary committee as an area where financial exclusion causes “greatest consumer harm”, spelling out the need for action to protect customers.

In another piece she covers Earthshot Prize finalists leveraging insurance to help vulnerable communities manage climate risks, drawing out lessons for domestic insurers seeking to close protection gaps. She follows growth in non-standard insurance businesses, detailing gross written premium increases and steady profits at a specialist group.

Across these stories she brings the same focus on rules, risk and human impact that characterises her motoring coverage, linking road conditions, vehicle technology and regulation to the insurance products that ultimately absorb those risks.

Interviews, data and regulatory detail

Visavadia’s reporting style is marked by a heavy use of interviews, data and regulatory documents. Her work includes conversations with technology and transport executives, insurer leaders and climate-focused innovators, and she is described as an experienced interviewer and moderator who has covered investments, regulation and broader financial issues globally. In motoring pieces she frequently cites statistics from national schemes and official portals, such as dashcam submission figures and the spread of enforcement tools across all police forces in England and Wales.

She closely reads committee reports and parliamentary debates, using them to anchor stories on licensing delays, consumer harm and climate exposure, and she connects these institutional sources to case studies of drivers and policyholders. The combination of regulatory detail, industry perspective and concrete numbers gives her coverage a distinctive emphasis on how systems function in practice, rather than treating transport and insurance as separate beats.