Road To Nowhere

I'm not really into politics, but I love to stick my oar in with a good idea or two.

One thing that's bugged me in recent years is the traffic in the UK. Even as recently as ten years ago, I remember driving back up the M3 from one of my many Southampton gigs, and passing maybe three or four cars on the way back. Now it seems that the roads are busy at all times of the day - the country simply has too many people on the road.

The government's solution: charge more for motoring, build more roads, and tell people to take an overpriced public transport system. Brilliant.

My method would be to look at the cause. Too many cars. Why? Too many people driving. So why not tackle that instead? For starters, there are far too many drivers on the road who shouldn't be. You can still drive at 90 years old having taken your test more than 70 years ago (1938!) with nothing more than an eye examination. My dad is legally entitled to drive a truck. His test was taken during National Service, and involved driving a truck along a road into the nearest town. A Corporal turned the truck around for him, and my dad hopped back in the cab and drove back - that was it. Passed with flying colours. Even tests taken as recently as ten years ago bear little relation to today's driving conditions, and still today driving tests don't include motorway or night driving! Unbelievable.

So, policy number one - introduce compulsory driving tests every five years. If you're a good driver, you have nothing to fear. If you're a bad driver, you deserve to fail your test and get off the road.

So that's got rid of a good 10% or so of our drivers off the road. What next? Well, what about looking at why people are driving? I love nothing more than a spin round the country lanes on a Sunday afternoon, but that's my choice. Some people have to drive to work, so increasing prices won't have any effect on them at all.

Instead, what about offering companies tax incentives to get a certain percentage of their workforce working from home one day a week? My company offers this, and far from a loss in productivity, it boosts morale and people work harder with less distractions. In this age of technological wizardry, there are very few excuses for people driving to an office every day.

So there you have it - get bad drivers off the road, and get people to work from home. All sounds a bit simple really doesn't it?