Low-traffic neighbourhood schemes have caused arguments up and down the country. I was against them at first – before I realised how well they work
I revised my opinion once in 2007. I went on the radio to vigorously protest against the smoking ban, which was just about to come in, and was giving it the full Farage welly, nanny-state this, fundamental-liberty-of-man that. An unruffled guy from the GMB union argued, contrawise, that a person’s right not to get cancer from secondhand smoke at work was more important than the slightly foggier right to do whatever you liked, wherever you were. Stumped, I had to change my mind, right there mid-conversation. “Well that was unpleasant,” I thought to myself. “I’m definitely not doing that again.”
So it is with a kind of aching regret that I’ve come round to low-traffic neighbourhoods.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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