Joan Smith: 'Cars' is a four-letter word...

Almost 20 years ago, when a group of professional women defied Saudi law and drove through the streets of Riyadh, the word "driver" started being used as an insult in that part of the world. I have some sympathy with those women, but I think it's time we started using the word with a curl of the lip in this country. British drivers – not all of them, but the ones who think it's their inalienable right to use their cars as much as they like – are among the most antisocial people on earth. Worse, they have political clout: last week, in the middle of a major oil crisis, they demanded that the Government do something about it and Gordon Brown felt he had to comply. He duly rounded on the Opec oil cartel, but that won't stop calls for him to cancel rises in fuel duty scheduled for autumn. After Crewe, Labour MPs are so terrified of losing their seats that they may well persuade him to do it.

Welcome to 21st-century realpolitik, where the fact that overconsumption of oil is destroying the planet matters less than a noisy group of wannabe Jeremy Clarksons. Political leaders haven't worked out how to tell people the stark truth – that we can't carry on living like this – and survive the electoral consequences; in the US, Hillary Clinton and John McCain are calling for a summer "holiday" from fuel duty and wrecking any green credentials they ever had, even though American petrol is scandalously cheap. A few years ago, on a book tour of US cities, I was aghast when my publisher sent a stretch limo to pick me up at the airport; when I recovered the power of speech, I shouted across the chasm between myself and the driver and asked how many miles it did to the gallon. The answer was seven.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't own cars, especially in rural areas where public transport is inadequate. I am suggesting that our present level of car use is a luxury we can no longer afford, which is why I always give a quiet cheer when the cost of petrol and diesel rises. In residential areas two- and three-car families have become the norm, and I'm not talking about little runabouts like my Ford Ka; the same people who whinge about the price of petrol have often spent £40,000 or £50,000 on top-of-the range saloons and SUVs without stopping to think of the cost in road accidents and premature deaths from respiratory disease. How I long for politicians prepared to talk frankly about the damage caused by ever-increasing car ownership and face down the shrill demands of fuel-price protesters.

That isn't a description of the Prime Minister, and I don't think it applies to David Cameron. So we may have to rely on the law of supply and demand to save us from the tyranny of those drivers who don't seem to have grasped the underlying cause of the current crisis: that there isn't enough oil to go round. The good news is that a new survey by the AA found 64 per cent of respondents have made a "conscious decision to travel less by car" – and that was before the latest increases in the price of oil. The days of cheap petrol are over. Oil is an addiction, and all those Top Gear groupies had better get ready to go cold turkey.

Interesting? Click here to explore further