Should traffic lights be abolished? That's the call from one columnist in The Times today.
Martin Cassini proposed that traffic lights should be removed because they replace skilled and responsible behaviour with inferior state controlled behaviour.
Paul Smith, founder of the road safety campaign Safe Speed, said: "The argument for individual responsibility lies at the core of the Safe Speed campaign -- and so it should -- our road safety system is founded on it. The tragedy is that Department for Transport has been imposing ever tighter controls and restrictions on road use: cameras, humps, speed limit reductions, countless thousands of signs, and massive needless enforcement of regulations.
"These are billion-pound policies that have actually made matters worse.
"But there are ever growing demands for policies that develop and encourage individual responsibility. It's not that we should trust drivers more. Instead we need such policies to get the best possible performance out of our road users; we need to appeal to natural behaviour and build on natural strengths."
"We won't get road safety back on track until we have 'psychologically sound' policies that play to human strengths."