Baby you can't drive your car

Guest Post by Andy Mac

When I was a teenager, my biggest ambition in life wasn’t to do well in my education; or to marry and start a family. It was to learn to drive a car. The layout of my old school meant that the teachers’ car park was situated between the playground and the main cluster of school buildings. The path from the playground to the school ran adjacent to the car park, and I would often pause momentarily on the way back from lunch break, look at the array of cars in their bays, and wish I had the ability to sit behind the wheel and confidently drive a vehicle down a road. My parents were both in their forties before they passed their respective tests, so there was no way I was going to emulate their late arrival to the joys of driving. I took my first driving lesson on my 17th Birthday (15/11/1989); passed my test on the first attempt on the 16/03/1990 at West Wickham Test Centre; and have been driving pretty much constantly ever since.

As well as driving the length and breadth of the United Kingdom (across all four of its constituent parts), I have also driven cars extensively in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Australia, Greece, Cyprus, India and the United States. With the exception of India (which is on a whole different level in so many ways), I have found driving in my own country more stressful and more economically punitive than anywhere else in the world. Moreover, this is the only country where I’ve felt I’m being punished by the state for the desire to have the degree of independence that only driving brings. It’s almost as if those in the corridors of power so resent mass car ownership, they will resort to just about every trick in the book to make it as miserable an experience as possible.

Let’s start off with the woeful inadequacy of our road network. Despite successive governments over the past 25 years engaging in an experiment to bring half the known universe to settle in these islands, the expansion of the motorway network has ground to a halt. In my teenage and early adult years, I vividly recall the opening of the M25 around London; the M40 from London to Birmingham; the M6 Toll north of Birmingham; the M20 down to Folkestone; the A74M from the top of the M6 up to Glasgow; and the A1M from Leeds to Newcastle. When was the last time you glanced at a UK road map to see a motorway under construction? Such projects would be anathema to the ‘green’ apostles that infest the upper echelons of national and local government today. As of 2025, it has resulted in the United Kingdom having only 2,350 miles of motorway for a country of 68 million people. France, with a broadly similar population, has 7,300 miles of motorway; whilst Germany has 8,230, and Spain tops the chart with an astonishing 9,700! The Netherlands, with a population of only 18 million people, still has almost 1,680 miles of motorway, despite having a landmass only 1/7 the size of the United Kingdom. So if you’re squeezing your steering wheel in frustration as you’re sat in a huge traffic jam, wondering why a journey from Warrington to Huddersfield is taking two hours in peak periods, it’s because those who govern us would prefer to make the time in your car hellish in the hope you’ll choose the sub-standard public transport system instead. I know that’s not what you’d call joined-up thinking, but these are the British governing classes I’m talking about here!

It’s not just the infrastructural inadequacy of our road network in Britain, it’s the way that network is managed. There can be no other country (in this world, in this galaxy, or galaxies far beyond) more adept at peppering every single road you travel on with utility works: gas, electricity, water, broadband, barrier repairs…(https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr29xn4rlpo). In each and every case, they manage to turn what should be a two or three-day workload into something that lasts weeks. Oh, and not forgetting the very 21st Century approach to Health and Safety, in which ever road repair has to be guarded by barriers set at a 300-yard radius around the works in question, with an ’82-way traffic control’ thrown in just for added high blood pressure effects on all those it inconveniences. Three decades ago, John Major’s government set up the ‘Cones Hotline’ so that drivers could report their frustrations to the relevant authorities. Fast forward to 2025, that hotline has long since disappeared. Sadly, the phenomena which gave rise to it has only intensified ten-fold.

On top of the tortoise-paced progression of your journey in Britain today, it’s the criminal costs incurred by car ownership that add insult to injury. From some of the most expensive fuel in the Western world, to a host of so-called ‘clean air’ zones in various British cities, the car is firmly in the cross hairs of our parliamentarians. Take London, for example, (though to refer to it as a ‘British city’ is really stretching credibility). The Mayor there has introduced an exorbitant ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone) which, get this, not only covers Central London but the entire metropolis – from Bloomsbury to Biggin Hill! It’s supposedly to keep the capital’s air pure and ‘prevent the deaths of little children’, etc. Naturally, you can still drive any ‘non-compliant cars’ in London and, in turn, obliterate the lungs of tots under the age of seven (if you believe the propaganda), it’s just that you’ll be charged a daily £12.50 fee for doing so. Human life is precious to Sid Khan, but not more precious than extorting Mr and Mrs Jones of Orpington every time one of them turns the ignition key in their 1995 Ford Mondeo.

An insufficient road network; omnipresent protracted utility works; sky-high fuel costs; low traffic neighbourhoods; pure air zones; rocketing town centre parking charges (https://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/this-will-kill-us-traders-slam-near-40-parking-charge-hi-324405/); road signs barely legible and never repaired or replaced. Does that sound like a country where drivers are valued for what they add to the economy? If you think it does, try doing what I did last year and spend six days driving around Los Angeles. Then you can compare and contrast the difference between a city where car owners are almost regarded as royalty, and a country where their counterparts are viewed as bottomless pits of revenue to be exploited and plundered.