Those of us who appreciate the ability of vehicles to get us from one place to another will have noticed a strange phenomenon besetting Britain’s roads. 

First came the planters, the wooden roadblocks deposited by some of our councils in the hope that closing roads might halt the spread of Covid. The measures were part of central government’s Active Travel programme, which morphed into environment-based road closures enforced by cameras and fines. Since then, the reasons have changed, varying from pollution and congestion to health and safety. But restrictions on driving have continued apace.

Few people know this, but many of these policies are underpinned by a new ideology called Vision Zero. Like Zero Covid, it offers a seductive blend of idealism and virtue, “a fundamentally different way to approach traffic safety” aimed at eliminating the number of serious accidents on the roads. The idea, originating in Sweden and promoted by organisations such as Vision Zero Network, is being embraced by authorities around the UK. Witness Transport for London’s Vision Zero statement: “The Vision Zero approach is based on the fundamental conviction that loss of life and serious injuries are neither acceptable nor inevitable”.

You may be thinking that reducing speeds and closing a few side roads may not cut it. Indeed. The mother policy at the heart of Vision Zero is a “modal shift away from private vehicles” and a reduction in the “dominance of motor traffic”. In other, less euphemistic words, the authorities mean to stop us driving. 

In Birmingham, the municipal authority aspires to “remove” motor vehicles from the country’s second largest city. The authors of the Road Harm Reduction Strategy lament the fact that past attempts to reduce accidents haven’t worked, claiming that a “bolder approach” is needed: “If Vision Zero is to be embraced, we must transform our streets, putting pedestrians, cyclists and buses first and actively removing motor vehicles.” 

The council proposes to achieve Vision Zero by means of measures such as the “reallocation” of road space (narrowing roads) and “managing demand of the kerbside” (removing parking). Drivers deserve this treatment because they are inherently anti-safety: “As vehicle drivers have the potential to inflict the greatest harm, the focus will be on a shift away from car use to alternatives such as walking, cycling and public transport.” As with Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, the plan seems to be to make driving so difficult that motorists will give up their cars.

Other authorities identify “dangerous behaviour” as the problem — and surveillance as the solution. Vision Zero South West, a partnership of councils and police forces, plans to roll out AI cameras across Devon and Cornwall to detect “potential offences” within the car such as not wearing a safety belt. 

In its Vision Zero Strategy 2024- 2027, West Yorkshire Combined Authority pledges to embed camera technology into its road network. “Cameras are not about raising revenue,” the report authors insist, “but a crucial tool for achieving behavioural change.”

While Bath and North East Somerset Council does not have a formal Vision Zero policy (it’s resolved to set a Net Vision target for 2030), its Active Travel Masterplan outlines a similar vision. Getting to and around the hilly city of Bath will, in future, involve walking or cycling. Oh, and horse riding. If you can’t cycle or don’t have a horse and need to travel any distance, it looks like you’re going to be stuck.

Curiously, despite the focus on safety and the rise of near-silent electric cars, documents promoting Vision Zero make little reference to public education about road safety. And while mention is made of public transport, your correspondent hasn’t been able to detect any policies which would improve the UK’s patchy bus services or unreliable, pricey rail network.

How did we get here, to a place where councils, formerly concerned with street lighting and bin collections, are now deciding whether and on what terms the populace may drive? In a reply to a resident’s objection to the introduction of parking charges for motorbikes Michael Benn Senior Service Area Manager for Customer Services Parking, Markets and Street Trading at Hackney (another Vision Zero council) explains that “Hackney Council does not endorse commuting, and aims to reduce private vehicle use, which is why commuting is placed at the bottom of the Council hierarchy of road use.”

It’s not just local government taking this autocratic approach. Without any public debate, the UK government has signed up to “the Safe System”, a generic term for approaches such as Vision Zero advocated by the World Health Organisation and other supra-national bodies based on the idea that “human beings’ lives and health should never be compromised by their need to travel”.

Perhaps this paternalistic thinking goes some way to explain why car ownership is already more difficult for the average person. According to personal finance analysts Nimblefins, the price of the average small car has risen by 46 per cent since 2020. And car manufacturers are already rationing the sale of new petrol and hybrid vehicles to avoid Net Zero fines.

The new level of state control over the car market bears more than a passing resemblance to the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Communist authorities did not like the way cars gave citizens mobility and personal freedom and used various forms of rationing and price controls to limit car ownership.

Incrementally … the country is sleepwalking into a situation where only a privileged minority will be able to drive

In Albania — still the poorest country in Europe over thirty years after the end of communism — cars were banned. In 1984, the Prime Minister of Bavaria drove through the capital of Tirana on his way to Greece. He reported a grim situation: “At night, the town was in total darkness. There were no cars. We saw only a few trucks, most of them broken down. Some people were trying to repair them … The roads were in a sorry state.”

Does Britain understand what it is doing? Incrementally, by piecemeal measures introduced under the guise of “health”, “safety” and “environment”, the country is sleepwalking into a situation where only a privileged minority will be able to drive. Public transport in rural areas is poor and there are often significant distances between towns and villages. Even in cities, residents often need to drive to access other parts of the country. 

The lessons of communist countries only go so far here. De-mobilising a Western nation that is, for better or worse, dependent on vehicles in almost every aspect of life, has never been done before. The destination of Vision Zero can only be poverty and isolation. It looks to me like its advocates have zero vision.