You might not be aware of it yet, but at the high table of road traffic management a big conversation is taking place that could change the face of our roads for ever. After 40 years of an ever-expanding array of traffic-calming measures — from warning signs to road markings and speed humps — a revolutionary new theory is now under discussion. It asserts that the best way to improve road safety is not to increase roadside markings and warnings but to abolish them. Instead planners should rely on a new technique known as “psychological traffic calming”.

Rather than telling motorists what to do, the theory goes, they should be encouraged to take greater responsibility for their actions. Measures could include removing centre white lines, removing the kerb to blur the boundary between pavement and road, and changing the colour of the tarmac, all forcing drivers to pay more attention to what lies ahead.

Such methods are being developed by the Transport Research Laboratory on behalf of the Department for Transport. In Bristol some of these ideas have already been introduced. The city’s “home zones” — residential areas where pedestrians take priority over traffic — feature trees, benches and play areas close to the road, as well as centre white lines removed to encourage motorists to concentrate more on their environment.

In Wiltshire several urban roads have had central white lines removed, resulting in a 35% drop in accidents and a noticeable reduction in driving speeds.

While the controversial techniques are being tentatively explored in this country, they are far more advanced on the Continent. And perhaps the most advanced beacon of all is the small Dutch town of Drachten, home to 43,000 people in the flat Friesland pastures.

Driving through, it initially looks like any other quiet northern European town . . . until you notice that something is wrong, that something vital is missing.

In 1989 the councillors of this post-war town voted to begin the removal of every single traffic light; there are three left, but they are on borrowed time. They also decided to abolish white road lines and all warning and give-way signs.

“The lights were causing problems,” says Koop Kerkstra, the head of traffic policy, in Drachten’s modern town hall. “People were forever waiting to get across junctions. We also had more than 140 casualties a year. It was difficult to know what to do, and we certainly didn’t want to ban cars. We love cars in Drachten and it’s important that the town is a car-friendly one. Fortunately, I met a traffic engineer who had an unconventional solution.”

The engineer was Hans Monderman and the solution was to get rid of the lights and erase the white lines. “If you treat drivers like zombies, they’ll behave like zombies,” explains Monderman. In other words, if motorists are taught to blindly follow instructions, they stop thinking for themselves, and accidents follow.

Monderman was an unlikely person to come up with such a revolutionary plan: he had for many years been designing more conventional traffic-calming systems and had helped plan some of the first speed bumps and chicanes in Holland. But, he says, he was unsatisfied with the results. “Speeds fell by about 10%, but as time passed, road safety didn’t improve.”

In an effort to correct the imbalance he began to think about some of the road designs he had installed that did make a difference. One of the most successful had been a junction in a village. In redesigning the junction Monderman had attempted to give it a more appropriate “village” feel. He changed the road surface from tarmac to cobbles and raised it so that it was level with the pavement. He also reduced the number of road markings to help it blend more easily into the rural location.

“It wasn’t a road only for cars to get through the village. It was also a social part of the village, and the drivers were aware of that, so they drove with more caution,” he says. “There were no signs or lines telling them to slow down or to look out for pedestrians. They knew from the design that they were part of the village, and they reacted intelligently.”

But while the design worked in a small village there was no way of knowing whether it would be feasible in a busy urban environment. Monderman set about trying to persuade town councils to give the theory a chance, and Kerkstra accepted the challenge. In particular he wanted to test the idea on one junction east of Drachten’s town centre that was causing problems during peak hours. Jams built up at the lights of such lengths that other junctions froze and gridlock loomed every working day.