Do motorists still deserve to be treated like irresponsible Victorian children?

The car was once a symbol of Western freedom. Touring holidays, the open road, aspiration, capitalist affordable convenience (VW) versus communist get-what-you’re-given rubbish (Trabant). It hadn’t hit home quite how far we’ve fallen until I visited an exhibition on the German love affair with the car at the history museum in the old West German capital of Bonn. Today we’re more likely to associate driving with ruinous petrol taxes, dogmatic environmentalism, speed cameras, parking fines, stress and congestion. Once you could get in a car and genuinely feel that the free world was open before you.

This is what made Philip Hammond’s proposal, in 2011 as transport secretary, to raise the motorway speed limit to 80 miles per hour probably the boldest thing he’s ever done. Finally, here was a minister brave enough to take on the anti-car ideologues, and to change a law that has become ridiculous by its anachronism. Nothing came of it. But the Tories should return to this battle – not least to reignite a national debate about responsibility and freedom.

Given we are talking about road safety, the usual arguments for raising the speed limit are understandably technical. It is ludicrous to claim that our roads and our cars are no safer than in the Sixties when the 70mph limit was set. Engine technology has improved dramatically, tyres are better, and crucially braking systems are more advanced. Smart motorways, on which speed limits vary based on conditions, can also improve safety.

Speed doesn’t kill on its own, but inappropriate and reckless speed does. This is why the AA backed a variable 80mph limit a few years ago, with drivers allowed to go faster if road conditions permitted it. France gets by quite well with a toll motorway limit at 130kmph in good conditions (about 80mph) and 110 in poor ( just under 70).

There is some evidence that faster driving would marginally boost the economy, too, although higher fuel consumption at higher speeds would raise motoring costs. And we might throw wounded national pride into the mix. I drove to Germany, via France and the Low Countries, and it was obviously depressing that, of them, only Belgium shares Britain’s 70mph limit (in fact a little higher, at 120kmph).

Hammond’s plans were quietly shelved in 2013, because the Government was spooked by anti-car activists. Britain’s drivers cannot be trusted, they argued, so we must instead double-down on the existing law. We now have the worst of all worlds: a lower speed limit than many other countries, but also among the toughest enforcement. Last week we discovered that four speeding penalties were issued every minute last year, exacerbated by our burgeoning speed camera network.

So if we’re to save driving – and all it symbolises – technical arguments will not be sufficient. This is about whether people can be responsible with greater freedom, or they deserve to be treated like Victorian children. What better way to prove the pessimists wrong than by raising the speed limit and showing that faster motorways need not be less safe?

We now have the worst of all worlds: a lower speed limit than many countries but also among the toughest enforcement, exacerbated by our burgeoning speed camera network