Well, blow me down. Last week, in the context of the absurd new regulations on singing in a pub, I wrote about the Downing Street petitions website: a “listen-to-the-people” wheeze that has been active since November and trundled gently along ever since. Now suddenly the site tops the news agenda because an “e-petition” against road pricing and vehicle tracking has hit a million signatures.

The snowball effect of publicity means that the number is now even higher; by lunchtime yesterday 1,149,664. The number shot up by more than 6,000 in the few minutes that the Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander was on the radio: “We welcome the opportunity to take forward the debate . . .” – whoops, another 200 – “The challenge is to engage in the discussion . . .” – 500 more, bang! He did his irritable best: “You could,” he said condescendingly, “have contradictory views appearing on the No 10 website tomorrow.” Indeed; there are two petitions in favour of vehicle tracking, with a total of 519 signatures. On the other hand secondary petitions against it have 4,268 – and still the main petition mounts.

I wish I could share credit for this outbreak of online stroppiness, but must admit that my pet cause (the one against small pubs having to ask the chief constable a fortnight in advance if anyone plans to sing a song) is only up by a third. Still, the existence of the site and the palpable glee of its users is interesting. As issues fly by, Downing Street may come to regret setting it up and condemning every policy and its minister to the cyberstocks.

A brief caveat: while the site tries to reduce faking, the only apparent check is that only one vote is allowed per e-mail address, endorsed by replying to a prompt. Since you can get six free e-mail addresses in ten minutes, we can’t rule out multiple voting (the governing party should know that, after its famous attempt to make Tony Blair “ Today Man of the Year” in 1996 got shamingly annulled). Also, a million and a half is a tiny proportion of all drivers; many probably see the point of the measure, and trust the ministerial promise that this is not just a way to chisel money out of us and snoop on every little journey to our bookie, dealer, mistress or Conservative Club. There are boundaries even to British paranoia.

However, such upheavals should make any government reflect on the limits of its power to reshape behaviour. Merely scolding, taxing and obstructing will never work. Like ants, like relentless water seeking out the smallest crevice, human beings will always shape their daily world in a way that makes life bearable for them and their closest families. In some countries it is through corruption, in others through ignoring the rules, cheating them or simply paying up. Anybody in government should have a sign by their desk saying “People do whatever it takes”. When it comes to driving cars, decades of public mismanagement have brought about a situation where – just to do what life takes – too many people spend too long at the wheel.

Town planning pampered the motorist for half a century, and still does; the citizen in a tin can outranks the soft-shell version. Cars speed by on the flat while pedestrians climb through smelly underpasses; ribbon developments and superstores become inaccessible without a car. In city and countryside alike pedestrians have been implicitly treated as second-class citizens; so pedestrianism has contracted to cover mainly those too young, old or poor to drive.

Railways were shortsightedly pruned by Beeching, allowed to become expensive and inefficient, and are not improved by bungled privatisation and continuing government interference. Buses were deprived of conductors in a crazy false economy, becoming uglier and more dangerous. I like buses, but it is glum to watch a lone driver being racially abused by a drunk while passengers shrink from interfering and older ones dream of the days of burly conductors and nearby policemen. Who will come to a harassed 12-year-old girl’s aid in the distant back half of a speeding bendy-bus, or during a long wait in a dim bus shelter? No wonder parents drive children around; no wonder every 17-year-old pants for the safety, privacy and freedom of a car.

Road pricing is one big clunking measure, but hundreds of small nimble things could have been done over the years. Family shoppers would park and ride more if city councils created free left-luggage lockers to dump shopping while taking the children for tea. Holidaymakers would enjoy the old branch lines, if only there was a luggage forwarding service. The closure of rural post offices, cottage hospitals, surgeries and village shops driven out by high business rates speaks for itself.

I would never drive 20 miles to the mainline station at Ipswich if there was any train to my local station after 9pm. I would not even take the car to the local station if there was a bus, or a bar to lock up a bike. I certainly would not have done so many long-laden drives to university if – as in my own youth – travellers could drop a big trunk at the home station and find it stacked on the platform on arrival.

Many things could have been done, or encouraged, or subsidised, any time this past quarter-century. They weren’t. So – like ants, like water, like grains of sand – people flow round the obstructions of cost and danger and inconvenience. In cars. The current (and often unreasonable) outbreaks of motorist-rage about vehicle tracking, speed cameras and parking are just part of that process. Governments should have been carefully digging better channels for the human flow, shoring up the banks, gently managing the transport landscape. Instead, we now have an attempt to build a big, crude, dam. In a hurry.

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