People need to be told the bleedin' obvious it seems. In these nanny-state times the people of the world's richest countries need to be instructed, cosseted and protected from their own stupidity. It may also be that in these politically beige times that governments don't have much else to do apart from helping the rich get richer and widening the level of inequality between the poorest and wealthiest among us.

Motorists have been at the sharp end of the practice. Sometimes with justification, sometimes without. Nobody would now seriously argue that the introduction of speed limits was a bad thing. It all began in London in 1861 when the Locomotive Act, popularly known as the Red Flag Act was introduce slapping a 10mph limit on the new-fangled motor car or "light-locomotive".

It was brought about because there had been a dramatic increase in the number of people being run over. Four years later an amendment required a bloke with a red flag to run in front of the car and cut the limit to 4mph and just 2mph in urban areas.

Early boy racers had to wait until 1896 for the limit to be raised again to an earth shattering 14mph.

This might seem amusing today but if you need to get to work in less than three hours or you want a visit to granny's to take less than two days by car I'd stop laughing. Speed kills you see, and road safety campaigners want us all to slow down, dramatically (Jeremy Clarkson says it's the sudden coming to a halt that actually kills you).

As with those early pioneers, there needs to be some balance in the current debate about speed, but there isn't. That's where the nanny state comes in, you see. There is now a road safety industry in this country, it keeps lots of people in cushy jobs, and requires a constant stream of reports and advertising to sustain it.

And what do all the research, the policies, the rules and the laws tell us? It's all our fault, the motorist, that's right. You see we drive too fast. If we didn't there wouldn't be a problem. This of course is true, to a degree but it doesn't tell the whole story. If we all walked it would eliminate traffic accidents altogether. If we reintroduce the man with the red flag we would see a very significant drop in fatalities.