Mike Rutherford's column

Mike raises some pertinent questions about the anti-car brigade

Auto Express Car Reviews

By Mike Rutherford

11th November 2007

Is there anyone more miserable and counter-productive in the motoring world than the mischievous ecomental activist with spiteful anti-car credentials? I’m not naming names as there are just too many of them out there, and character assassinations are not my style. But they know who they are and they know they are troublemakers. These people are horribly negative. Deliberately or otherwise, they can do more harm than good.


	Hypocrisy and vicious anti-car propaganda are what ecomentalists do best. But they don’t have a bad word to say about buses

Only last week, a leading motorist-loather (I refuse to name him and give him the publicity he craves) was on air, refusing to accept that as far as the environment is concerned, drivers and non-drivers are all winners if cars are freed up a little to run in a high gear and at steady speeds. This allows their engines to sip the least fuel and pump out the lowest emissions. See what I mean by negative? Seems that ecomentalists would prefer us to be languishing with our engines running on traffic-choked roads, where fuel wastage and exhaust pollution is at its unforgiving worst.

I’ve met them professionally and socially. I’ve argued on TV and radio with them. I’ve travelled on public transport with them. And I’ve never been able to get through to any of them. They have a fundamental and deep-rooted hatred for cars. I’m having to generalise, but their approach today is the same as that of decades ago. They think private motor vehicles are wrong and that privately owned trains, buses and coaches are right. And nothing – not even the most reasonable arguments in favour of car use – can change their point of view.

Even when motorists are doing effective, fuel-efficient journeys, they’re still slagging us off for ‘destroying the planet.’ After a heated, late-night TV debate I even offered one of these car haters an olive branch in the form of a lift to the station. Unashamedly, he accepted, but despite the fact that he would have missed his last train home were it not for the car ride, and that he was enjoying the heated seat, sound system, and the fact that he was getting a free, chauffeur-driven service, he still maintained he hated cars – and motorists –and would continue to do everything possible to get rid of them. Hypocrisy or what? In fact, hypocrisy is what the ecomentalists do best.

But they do vicious anti-car propaganda equally well. You won’t see or hear them making positive noises about, for example, the brilliant Volkswagen Polo Bluemotion, which boasts low fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. But you will regularly witness them putting the boot in on drivers, whether they’re behind the wheel of a Bluemotion or not.

Conversely, they don’t seem to have a bad word to say about ageing, near empty buses and coaches. Or diesel-glugging trains. And why are they so opposed to minor schemes such as bypasses and road widening, yet so damn keen on an all-new Scotland-to-London high-speed railway line?

Answer? Because in their warped world, roads are pure evil, whereas rail-roads are from heaven. To them, a mother who drives her children to school in a car with seatbelts is a witch, while the mum who puts her kids on a seatbelt-free bus is a goddess. Public transport users are nice, deep thinking people. Car users are scum.

At first I was merely annoyed and irritated by the professional anti-car crusaders. Now I’m suspicious about exactly who they are, what motives they have and where their funding comes from. Any ideas? All information about them gratefully received.