My small residential street in south-east London, like many similar roads, has speed bumps. They’re not very pretty, and drivers tend to accelerate between them, slowing at the last moment to cross each hump with a thwack of the suspension.

So, why not get rid of them, as is reportedly being mooted by some in government, who seemingly believe smoother driving is the pain-free way to reduce the vehicle emissions that are choking so many of our towns and cities.

Even if you set aside arguments over whether or not such a move would reduce pollution, there are a couple of fairly simple reasons not to remove speed bumps. The most obvious is the reason we need such schemes in the first place: too many drivers simply can’t be trusted to drive at speeds which are safe and social.

Vehicle pollution isn’t a crisis because of speed bumps. It's because, to put it bluntly, people drive too often

My street – which has the curse of being a favourite cut-through between two bigger roads – is already jammed with cars, vans and trucks at rush hours, the majority of them bouncing between the bumps as fast as they can manage above the 20mph limit.

Remove those ugly mounds and there would be nothing to stop these people, almost all of whom do not live on the street and have no stake in its liveability, whizzing past at 35mph or more.

Crossing the road – which is already so tricky that when I take my son to school we parents have to, on occasion, physically block the traffic so kids can cross – would become almost impossible. At the same time, noise levels would rise noticeably – one estimate is that a 6mph rise in speeds can increase volumes by 40%.

This is not to demonise drivers in particular. I’m not arguing that people undergo a personality change when they get behind the wheel. My own view is that the same person tends to act with roughly equal idiocy whether in a car, on a bike, or on a train, you name it.

The only difference is that when you’re driving a motor vehicle the repercussions you visit on other people – notably danger, noise and smog – are hugely magnified.

You can massively annoy someone on a train, for example, by playing your favourite song over a tinny phone speaker, but you won’t maim them or stunt the growth of their children’s lungs.

This brings me to the other point. Vehicle pollution isn’t a national crisis because some traffic engineers got carried away with speed bumps or, to mention the other current idiocy of our times, because some councils have built bike lanes. It is because, to put it in the bluntest terms, people drive too often.

For all the talk of a “war on the motorist”, the 320.5bn vehicle miles travelled on Great Britain’s roads in 2016 was a record high. It’s not just cars: van and light goods traffic shot up 3.4% year-on-year amid the growth in internet shopping.

The combined effect of all this is almost beyond belief, including an estimated 20,000-plus premature deaths due to emissions, and more than 2,000 schools and nurseries facing illegal smog levels.



If that death toll and threat were caused by anything else – terrorism, unsafe food, bad workplace safety – it would be a national crisis. Instead, the government tries to duck difficult decisions as to how to get the worst-polluting vehicles off the roads.

Yes, the current focus on diesel has to acknowledge both the apparent duplicity of automakers over the extent of emissions, and the misplaced prior official efforts to encourage a switch to the fuel.

But it’s worth stressing that this goes far beyond one type of car. Even if, overnight, every vehicle became electric, there is increasing concern about the perils of small particles released from tyre and brake wear.

So what’s the solution? It’s to rebalance our nation, especially towns and cities, to the needs of human beings. Cycling levels have remained static in recent years, while levels of walking have dropped. With two-thirds of all UK journeys being of less than five miles, and 62% involving just one person, this is a vast wasted opportunity.

Yes, making streets not just safe but obviously safe will require years of effort and some politically very tricky decisions, notably parallel moves to disincentivise driving for short, solo trips. It will also need massive investment in public transport.

But the other option is the status quo, one which sees the costs of driving disproportionately visited upon poorer people, who are more likely to live in cheaper housing closer to busy roads.

It is an argument as much about social justice as transport. For all the media assumption that cars are the only answer, 25% of English households don’t own one, a figure that rises significantly in cities.

In my own local area, the census says, 58% of households are vehicle-free. And yet about 80% of the street space is given over to the transport of the minority, whether parked or moving.

Given how astonishingly unfair this all is, it’s probably no surprise some people prefer the displacement activity of focusing on speed bumps.