28p a mile would scupper things for more people than very high mileage users. Rural dwellers would end up paying over. Given a lot of disabled are not cash rich it would be pretty difficult for them to find the big sums to pay – and prove difficult for Motability to get back from non-payers too.
As a rural dweller, I do 12-13000 miles a year, not hard when the nearest decent supermarket is 27 miles away and same for almost all shops. Hospital 37 miles away and wife has been admitted 3 times this year already – add in the outpatients visits afterwards and I’ve been going there several day a week since before christmas.
Wife is training for the London marathon, the only decent stretch of paths/road to run on are…yup…27 miles away. Local roads are too dangerous to run on and she needs a decent 16-18km stretch. She has a treadmill for shorter runs, but not really suitable for 3-4 hour sessions. Speaking of that, we are off to Inverness for the 1/2 marathon this weekend, that’s 250 miles or more easily. Wedding event the following week, another 80-100 miles for that, soon adds up.
Call it 12500 miles a year, that’s £2100 overpayment – hardly buttons when private lease firms allow you to adjust the mileage for a relatively small monthly increase (around £500 in total over 3 years to go from 10,000 to 15,000 miles seems about average).
In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.