First they try to make us feel guilty by whipping up the most astonishing scare stories about air pollution - stories which have no basis in fact. Then they stop new roads being built and introduce new traffic lights, constrictions and road narrowing to create congestion where there was none before.

But their most effective weapon is safety. Here, they can do anything to us and we cannot argue, because to argue is to appear callous about those injured or killed on the road.

And they admit it. Friends of the Earth said in a report to the Government in 1995 that "speed limits should be made very low and rigidly enforced to take all the glamour out of motoring". Extreme anti car pressure ground Transport 2000 has set up a shadow group called "The Slower Speeds Initiative", which is campaigning for 55mph on the motorway, 40mph on A roads and 20mph (or even 10mph) everywhere else. These people collectively are very close to both local and national government, and have succeeded in persuading Roads Minister Lord Whitty to set up a speed limit review on their terms. They are ultimately behind this ruinous change in road safety policy.

The result of all this restriction, obstruction and persecution? Road deaths which fell continually for may years, have actually stopped falling since this anti speed obsession began to bite in the early nineties - and they have done so because the real causes of accidents have been ignored. Sound road safety principles have been swept away in a torrent of simplistic phrases, repeated over and over again by campaigners and government. Driving standards have been allowed to fall, rendering too many people incapable of recognising and responding correctly to hazards.

The population is being dumbed down.