ABOUT THE FREEDOM FOR DRIVERS FOUNDATION

This organisation was originally formed by Roger Lawson to deal with traffic and transport issues in Southeast London but expanded later to cover all of London and the wider UK. This page contains more background information on how the FFDF represents UK motorists. It also covers our policies. Our objective is to provide an active, responsible voice to lobby on behalf of Britain's drivers. We believe that official policies in recent years, both from the national Government and from London bodies such as the Greater London Authority (headed by the Mayor of London) and Transport for London have discriminated against drivers and private vehicle owners for no good reason. The financial incentives to favour public transport are misguided in essence.

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Road Pricing and Congestion Tolls

Many people are promoting road pricing and congestion tolls which can mean higher taxes for the average road user. For example, the London Congestion Charge has not been a success despite claims that it has and is enormously expensive to operate. It is a simple and crude system and with other cities developing CAZ schemes would it not be better to consider a national road pricing scheme?

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Taxation

Each year the Government raises over £50 billion in taxes from road users but only a small fraction of the money raised is spent on improving our roads (about £7bn). The result — you end up sitting in traffic jams. Any road pricing scheme needs to ensure that the overall level of taxes paid by drivers does not rise.

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Road Safety

Road safety policy has become distorted in the UK by anti-car and anti-motorist policies. Speed cameras breed like rabbits so that millions of people now receive speeding fines, but road deaths are barely dropping. A whole industry has developed from collecting money from motorists in the name of road safety when there is no hard scientific evidence for any benefit and the UK is falling behind other countries in reducing casualties.

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Speed humps have sprouted everywhere causing major problems for people with medical conditions, delays to emergency vehicles, more noise/air pollution, constant annoyance to road users and much higher costs from vehicle damage. But there is no evidence of any net benefit.

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Parking

Parking costs are rising rapidly, and provision falling, as local authorities use it as a “demand management” technique to cut traffic – in reality they just make life enormously inconvenient for the typical motorist. Decriminalised parking regulations and fixed penalty notices for bus lane and box junction infringements erode your basic human rights to a fair hearing and are often used primarily to raise money by local councils in London.

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The Environment

The use of road transport is being attacked on environmental grounds. But air pollution from private cars has been falling substantially and technology is going to make matters even better over the next few years.

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Emissions from all kinds of transport are only a fraction of total air pollutants, and those from private cars an even smaller factor. Unreasonable and unnecessary attacks on car usage will not solve any environmental problems. The people questioning the use of private cars are often unreasonably prejudiced or ignore the facts.

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This Web Site

This web site does not just explain our policies. It also contains all the facts and figures to support those policies and is a mine of information on transport issues, particularly in London. Our past newsletters (see Newsletters) which are downloadable from the site in full also contain many relevant articles. The web site and all past newsletters can easily be searched for information that is of interest by using the site Search facility - see box at top of page. If you can't find what you are looking for, require specific advice or simply wish to send us some comments, go to the Contact page.

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This web site concentrates on traffic and transport issues and our past campaigns to support motorists. See this page for information on campaigns: Campaigns or our blog for the latest news.

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Why You Should Support Us

Private cars and motorbikes provide the most flexible, and most cost-effective transport mode and are used for more than 85% of journeys. Those who wish to stop you using them often have vested interests in public transport or otherwise wish to curtail your freedom.

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JOIN TO SUPPORT OUR ACTIVITIES

If you want to learn more about our activities and receive the latest transport news just register to receive our newsletters for free here: REGISTER

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