Carlton TV put me head to head with the Chair of the Association of British Drivers (ABD) in a live debate last Sunday on their current affairs show ‘The Week’.
Having had a gander at their website – it was clear to me that they are very firmly of the view four wheels good – and anything inhibiting the free passage of those four wheels bad. They present themselves as the fearless champions of the downtrodden motorist – who just last week suffered yet another brick in their wall with the second reading of the ‘Traffic Management Bill’.
As if speed cameras, bus lane enforcement and the congestion charge weren’t enough of a trial to poor beleaguered motorists, there’s now this bill.
Without boring you to death, an example of the new measures in the bill would be the conversion from criminal to civil offences of transgressions like taking no notice of a “no right turn” sign or being caught in a yellow junction box – not to mention parking over 50cm away from a kerb.
Downgrading from criminal to civil offence might sound like something the ABD would welcome, but the sting in the tail is that it would mean a traffic warden could now give you a ticket for these offences.
Visions of traffic wardens chasing cars across yellow boxes or on their knees with tape measures by the kerb…
Despite these practical challenges, I like the general principle of taking more action against the small number of selfish drivers who block junctions, shoot across red lights regardless of others or cause jams by parking in unsuitable locations.
That’s not being anti-car – indeed, car drivers benefit as much as pedestrians and bus users from having safe junctions and fewer obstructions.
My TV adversary was definitely not a fan of bus lanes – and even less of a fan of getting a ticket for entering one. As pour moi – I’m a natural-born goody two-shoes, who sits patiently in the traffic lane whilst a stream of cars sail by in the bus lane. I fume at each transgressor that undertakes me, hooting my horn to signal my displeasure. I desire vengeance and long for justice to be visited upon them. And I feel a complete mug – the only fool obeying the rules?
Motorists who get done for speeding or abusing bus lanes deserve to be done. I will be delighted to see yellow junction box sinners done too.
And there is an answer for motorists. If you don’t do it – you won’t get a ticket. It’s not rocket science.
There’s a reason for all this – speed kills. Three thousand five hundred people a year dead and a further 35,000 injured.
Just think about that number a moment. If they were all reported, it would mean nine or ten deaths in the evening TV news, each and every night all through the year.
Which brings me to my last point – humps! I hate them. They are horrible. Well-behaved, non-speeding, bus lane observing car drivers like myself, have to suffer them as much as the irresponsible ones.
However, there is a new hump on the horizon. I am currently conducting a scrutiny investigation at the London Assembly on road humps. As we are in the middle of the work, it is too soon to come to conclusion but one thing of note that has come into the frame is a clever hump – a scientific hump.
This hump only acts as a hump if you speed. If you go at the set speed – say 20mph – then it deflates as you go over it as if there were no humps there. Miraculous. This hump rewards the good!
None of which would have been of any interest to my friend from the ABD. I don’t think there is anything in the world that could divest him of his belief in the divine right of motorists. After the program, I asked him whereabouts he lived in London. Spookily enough, he didn’t!
