THE government’s most senior transport adviser wants motorists to face tough financial penalties for the privilege of using four-wheel-drive vehicles in towns and cities.

Professor David Begg believes 4x4 drivers should be forced to pay higher car tax in urban areas and face a premium on the London congestion charge.

This weekend, Begg, the chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport branded such motorists “irresponsible”. He claimed the vehicles created high levels of pollution and threatened the safety of other road users.

His comments are part of a growing backlash against the use of bulky 4x4s on urban roads. Sales of the vehicles have more than doubled in Britain over the past decade.

In France, buyers of 4x4s face a higher “green” purchase tax from next year and councillors in Paris have proposed banning them from the capital.

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, recently described 4x4 drivers, including the thousands of parents who use the vehicles for the school run, as “complete idiots”.

“Four-by-four vehicles are simply not designed for driving in urban areas and to do so is irresponsible,” Begg said.

“If people want to cause damage to the environment, create congestion and continue to threaten the safety of other road users by driving these vehicles around, then they should be made to pay for it. In conditions such as London’s congestion charging zone, for example, 4x4 drivers should pay more than drivers of normal vehicles.”

Begg’s proposals on 4x4s have been welcomed by green groups and road safety campaigners. Green members of the Scottish parliament want off-roaders to be charged up to twice as much as other cars under a planned congestion charging scheme in Edinburgh.

But the motor industry said 4x4 drivers are already heavily taxed and often buy the vehicles because they afford greater protection in a crash. Sales of 4x4s, once largely the preserve of farmers, have soared from 71,103 in 1994 to 159,144 last year, accounting for more than 6% of the new car market.

Critics claim city dwellers increasingly see the vehicles as status symbols; a recent study found that only one in eight 4x4 owners had driven off-road.

In another attack on motorists yesterday, Richard Brunstrom, the police chief dubbed “the mad mullah of the traffic Taliban” for enforcing the use of speed cameras, said it was time to revert to covert equipment to trap drivers.

He launched an attack on Jeremy Clarkson, the Sunday Times columnist, accusing him and the “petrolhead lobby” of blinding the government to the benefits of the cameras.

It was Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales, who two years ago was forced to announce that cameras would be painted yellow and made more visible.

Yesterday he announced it was time for a rethink. He said the decision to paint them yellow had been a political one because ministers were worried that the public would not support hidden cameras.

“We ought to be looking at going to the Australian and New Zealand model of more comprehensive use of cameras — not all visible — and covert cameras in due course,” he told the BBC Today programme.

Last week Ray Shuey, a former assistant commissioner of Australia’s Victoria police, criticised the use of painted cameras saying it had turned Britain’s roads into a “cat and mouse game where motorists slow down for cameras and then speed up again”.

Motoring groups pointed to research showing that excessive speed was number seven in the cause of accidents. Top of the list was inattention, which might involve drivers looking for speed cameras.

Edmund King, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Using hidden cameras defies logic. If you put a camera at an accident blackspot it should be visible to slow down traffic not to hand out tickets after a crash.”

Clarkson, en route to the Festival of Speed at Goodwood yesterday, said: “I’ve long harboured a suspicion that Brunstrom is off his rocker and this confirms it. I call on him to prove that three-quarters of the population support the current use of speed cameras.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Fern Britton: 'I still can't see that I was wrong'
• Extreme cooking
• Easy French: Tarte Tatin