"I'm not sure it's terribly useful to talk about an "anti-car fraternity". I'll bet most of the people calling for lowered speed limits, traffic calming etc. are also drivers at least occasionally. Fifty years ago it was probably possible to divide the nation into motorists and non-motorists. These days it's not so easy."
Well, purely as an academic excercise, lets try.
Drivers have received training, and passed a test and received a licence, to demonstrate at least some awareness of how to control a car and how to use it on the road. (Most of them manage to drive around NOT having accidents all day. In fact I think the figure is something ridiculous like the average motorist kills sombody once. Every 400 MILLLION miles. But then that's only because they lump in the homicidal drivers and the suicidal pedestrians with the average motorists. )
The chancellor, and the transport minister, I believe, have not.
Drivers......................
Some people (some quite genuine) believe that cars are destroying the planet and wouldn't even accept a lift in one, and so probably haven't even had lessons. (Some paranoid conspiracy theorists still foolishly believe that there is a lone fifth man out there, a mole infiltrated into western society by the communists in the days of the cold war, "tasked" with undermining capitalism, but that is plainly incredible).
Drivers......................
Some hypocrites eg campaign for reduced speed limits and speed cameras, and are then the first people caught by same when they get their way.
Other hypocrites pontificate about the evils of motoring, and run two old jags!
Motorists want to cruise down a 30mph road at 30mph when it is safe to do so.
Certain people want them slam their brakes on every few yards, bump and bounce around over speed bumps, scrape their exhausts or worse, rev away, repeat the process, all in first gear.................to reduce the noise and pollution from traffic. Naturally.
Motorists want to cruise down a 30mph road at 30mph when it is safe to do so.
Certain people want them to concentrate on traffic "calming" measures: swerving up against the pavement to avoid central hatching, swerving back out again, to avoid pavement projections "guarded" by matt black stealth bollards, swerving back onto the pavement to avoid a car that has been forced out by a projection on the other side, as he swings away onto the pavement - in the interests of pedestrian "safety". Obviously.
Motorists want children to be taught that if they run out in front of a car within it's stopping distance it will hit them.
Certain people want children to be taught to reclaim the streets as play areas, emulate kids in "Speed Kills" ads and loiter and jaywalk on the road, and that they have the "right" of way, and a car "MUST" stop if they step out in front of it. All in the interests of child safety. Of COURSE!
Motorists want to be able to use a main radial route for getting to and from wherever it goes.
Certain people want to "relieve" congestion by halving the capacity of all main roads with bus lanes. 24 hours a day (where are the 24 hour buses?:-( Which means that capacity is further reduced (to zero?) because at every junction cars wanting to turn left have to stop in the right hand lane and negotiate a bus lane which usually runs right up to the junction. So logical when you think about it.
Certain people want to reduce road casualties by introducing a proliferation of speed cameras on fast straight stretches of roads, never by schools or in residential areas. Because they CARE about people, especially children, not because they have anything against cars.
Certain people want to ban the advertisement of cars. Not all cars, of course. And not all adverts. Just any not taken with an ultra high speed camera that can capture a shot of a moving car without any trace of blur in the wheels or background. As any implication that a car can actually move would be to encourage death from the fatal disease speed, recently rediscovered by the medical profession, after lying dormant since the early pioneering days of the railway age. That doesn't mean that they don't care about the national car industry, or even local employment prospects. And it certainly doesn't mean that they are anti car. Just pro life.
Clearly ALL of the above, motorists, hypocrites, and non-motorists alike, logically, are, of COURSE, all obviously totally PRO-motorist, naturally.
They aren't being confrontational. It's just that being intelligent and caring individuals they ask why should one group (if it wants to call itself a separate group) get its own way all the time when we all pay for the roads. They want quieter streets where their kids can play safely. They want to be able to walk along the pavement and feel safe. And they want to be able to go about their lives without the constant rumble of speeding traffic.
And THAT is why they campaign for all these speed bumps (what did the governments own Transport Research Lab say about them?), traffic "calming" measures, and diversions (sorry, speed cameras, traffic "calming" and bus lanes - and what did the governments own Transport Research Lab say about them?).
And therefore it is impossible to seperate out one group and label it as an "anti-car fraternity".
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