Freelance journalist Lynne Curry has little sympathy for mad-eyed hysterical motorists who remove their brains and put them in a bucket before entering a discussion about car use. This column first appeared in the Western Morning News.

What marvellous irony that two of the motorists quoted whingeing about the price of petrol this week were undertaking fantastically long day trips to France.

What an amazing lack of any sense of social responsibility is shown by people who choose to live a bucolic idyll and drive miles and miles into town to work. When the British public is unable to afford petrol, how come it drives around in four-wheel drive gas-guzzlers that need a gallon to get down the street?

But let’s leave logic or even loosely-connected thinking out of this. When it comes to the “freedom” to drive, the country is apparently united: however extravagant the journey, however extravagant the car, however barmy the lifestyle, all must have affordable petrol to facilitate their individual choices. Businesses must have cheap fuel so that they can drive lettuces 500 miles up (and then back down) the country. Try as you might, you couldn’t make it up.

Of course, the Government must stop the blockades of refineries. Then they must ensure that the emergency services, public services and genuinely essential users are able to obtain the fuel they need to do their jobs. They then could take some money off duty. It should not be beyond the wit of Government to find ways to ensure that truly essential haulage and transport and food producers are cushioned from genuinely crippling impact. But that’s it. After that, the price of fuel is dictated by the price of the commodity itself (which is what is affecting farmers, who do not pay a penny in tax on the “red diesel” they use).

The price of the commodity itself is one of the market forces which have also bequeathed us out-of-town retail developments, big and powerful cars, split-location lifestyles, second homes, supermarkets ferrying spring onions from Germany and out-of-season green beans from Nigeria and other unsustainable indulgences which the public have embraced so happily.

You can’t have it both ways. Either you try to inject some sense and controls into the way we live, which means constraints on individual lifestyles for the good of everyone, or you don’t.

What amazes me is that despite the fact that the poor motorist is apparently being driven off the road by the Chancellor’s greed, there is no evidence that he is making the smallest effort to economise. Housing estates round here (that’s right, housing estates) are full of those risible four-wheel drives, taken on half-mile trips to schools and supermarkets along perfect suburban roads.

If you happen to live in a 30mph zone, I doubt you’ll have noticed that the cost of petrol has encouraged drivers to stay within the limit, and if you travel on motorways at 70mph, I expect you will still be watching the rest sail past with the confidence of the overpowered and unimpeded.

If you drive in towns – and I expect all motorists do, as they all have their own unique reasons for adding to the pollution and congestion – I doubt you will have noticed a change in people’s crazy brake-and-accelerate driving habits. That’s how worried the British motorist is about fuel prices.

Then again, in the frenzy that always surrounds matters of man and his most prized possession – his car – great numbers of reasonable people are reduced to irrational hysterics. Before entering a discussion about car use, they apparently remove their brains and put them in a bucket. One of the hot debates in our town at the moment concerns an ancient road whose occupiers have just been prevented from parking their cars on a theatre car park. Every time the theatre had a show, none of the patrons could park (not that most of them couldn’t walk, actually). When the theatre chained off the car park – as they justifiably and sensibly would – there was a rumpus.

In the windows of the residents – residents who write sane, rational socially-aware letters to the local newspaper on other topics – there appeared preposterous, nonsensical calls to arms and demands for council-provided parking. Having bought ancient houses with no parking, they are livid that they have been turfed off someone else’s property. Have they gone mad?

When I rode (on my bike) past our local garage on Monday, I wasn’t at all surprised to see a scene from the lunatic asylum, with mad-eyed drivers jostling and jockeying for position on the road outside as though they were queuing for a blood transfusion. Bumper-to-bumper on the carriageway and haphazardly blocking an access road to an industrial estate, they forced other vehicles into the middle of the road. Were they all essential users? Come off it.

How can the life-death-or-redundancy argument of the car-dependent square with the facts: that three-quarters of all journeys are under five miles, and that half of all journeys are under three miles? That’s not unaffordable motoring. It’s motoring only too affordable, to the detriment of those living in the roads, streets, villages and towns blighted by it. Our local garage was rationing supplies earlier this week (before they ran out). What an excellent idea this is, and how much more effective than price this would be in preventing unnecessary car journeys. The filthy, frightening, pounding road I have to run across, due to the volume of traffic making these piddling little unnecessary car journeys, was unusually quiet. It was bliss.

© Lynne Curry, September, 2000

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