What causes traffic jams? That’s easy: too many cars. No, wrong. Think again. What causes much of the congestion on our streets are traffic lights.

Think of all the hours in your life wasted as your car journey is stopped by lights to let non-existent traffic through. And then ask yourself this: who is the better judge of when it’s safe to go — you, the driver at the time and place, or lights programmed by an absent regulator? Traffic lights exist as a “cure” for a man-made malady — the misconceived priority rule. This rule confers superior rights on main-road traffic at the expense of minor-road traffic and pedestrians. To interrupt the priority streams, lights are “needed”.

Before 1929 when the priority rule came into force, a sort of first-come, first-served rule prevailed. All road users had equal rights, so a motorist arriving at a junction gave way to anyone who had arrived first, even the humble pedestrian. Motorists had a simple responsibility for avoiding collisions, and a duty of care to other road users.

In other walks of life the common-law principle of single queueing applies, but the law of the road, based on the priority rule that licenses queue-jumping and aggression, creates battlegrounds where we have to fight for gaps and green time.

But when lights are out of action — when we’re free of external controls and allowed to use our own judgment — peaceful anarchy breaks out. We approach slowly and filter in turn. Courtesy thrives and congestion dissolves. And when the lights start working again, congestion returns.

As reported in yesterday’s Times, the less regulation-obsessed Conservatives are open-minded about scrapping white lines, signs and traffic lights from Britain’s high streets. Certainly in Dutch cities, where lights have been scrapped, accidents and congestion have melted away. In Drachten 24 sets of lights were removed. The result? Typical journey times have been halved; and, accidents and congestion have all but disappeared. The beneficial effect of fewer controls can be seen elsewhere. In Montana the abolition of speed limits led to a 30 per cent drop in accidents and a 7mph fall in average speeds.

It’s clear that human beings have evolved to negotiate movement and resolve conflict in the blink of an eye. Traffic controls merely interfere with those innate skills. They encourage us to take our eyes off the road to watch the signals, rather than do the safer thing: weigh up what other motorists, cyclists or pedestrians are intending to do.

Not only do traffic lights help to impede journeys pointlessly, but the UK’s galaxy of 24-hour traffic lights amounts to GPH (grievous planetary harm). About 30 per cent of our CO2 output is from traffic. Professor David Begg, the influential transport expert, admits that 40 per cent of that comes from traffic idling. Every litre of fuel burnt produces 2.4kg of our CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Multiply the minutes of enforced idling at mandatory lights (and next to often unused, all-day bus lanes) by the hours in the day — and night — by the days in the year, by the number of vehicles and the environmental impact becomes clear.

As well as being environmentally unfriendly, traffic lights are also expensive. A set of lights at a typical crossroads can cost up to £100,000 to install and £10,000 a year to maintain. Since gaining power, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, has imposed more than 1,800 new sets of energy-guzzling lights. Someone is making a lot of money at public expense.

But how do policymakers get away with it? Is it because traffic lights are so ingrained that we can’t imagine life without them? Or could it also be because Transport for London — Public Enemy No 1 when it comes to counterproductive traffic controls in the capital — has a large budget and pays 76 of its managers more than £100,000 a year for producing what? Congestion?

At a recent talk — entitled, without a hint of irony, “London’s Moving” — the congenial former mayoral candidate, Steve Norris, listed the causes of congestion. Not once did he mention traffic lights. But he did argue for more high-cost, high-tech equipment. Is it a coincidence that he is chairman of ITS (the mis-titled Intelligent Traffic Systems), which supplies much of the control technology that keep our roads dangerous and congested?

To those who say scrapping lights won’t work, the answer is: it has never been tested in Britain. I have been asking traffic bosses to collaborate on a monitored trial to test the idea that we are better off left to our own devices, but they always say “no”. The Berlin Wall of the multibillion traffic control establishment is manned by highly paid experts. As a traffic-light-free world threatens their raison d’être, perhaps their resistance is understandable.

Mandatory traffic lights, all-day bus lanes, motorbikes banned from bus lanes, ferocious parking controls, premature congestion charging, one-way systems that make you go via XYZ to get from A to B . . . traffic controls turn our road network into a nightmare obstacle course.

Yes, the sheer volume of traffic can be a drama. But volume + controls = crisis. If we restored the common-law principles of equal rights and responsibilities, and allowed road users to filter in turn; if we got rid of lights and dismantled the traffic control behemoth, at a stroke we would make our roads safer, life greener, the traffic flow more smooth and we would soothe the rage of the needlessly halted motorist.

Martin Cassini is a writer and producer

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