clipped from: www.timesonline.co.uk   

Stop, get ready, go: let common sense begin

Personal responsibility is lost in the red stop-lights of an overregulated world. We must start thinking for ourselves again

turn off certain traffic lights, leaving drivers to negotiate crossings by caution, eye contact and mutual consideration. In one town in the Netherlands this system resulted in crashes falling by more than three quarters

So I found myself wondering whether society itself has more automatic traffic lights than is good for it. It is plain that we need the big red lights: don’t kill, hurt, imprison, steal or cheat. There is also an obvious role for general offences, on the model of “careless driving”. We have plenty — insulting behaviour, conduct liable to provoke a breach of the peace, outraging public decency, harassment, causing public nuisance, child neglect, endangering safety, littering. Yet month after month, year after year, micromanaging regulations are added, refining things down and creating pointless red lights.