Should All Older Cars Be Banned From UK Roads? A Tricky Balancing Act

Here’s a question – if it is of the utmost importance to improve air quality and reduce emissions in the United Kingdom, would it be a good idea to completely and totally ban older cars from all British roads?

It’s a debate that has been raging on for some time now – not least since London mayor Boris Johnson himself voiced a rather radical idea to oust diesel cars altogether. Slightly more recently, the rather painful VW emissions-scam scandal once again called into question the problem of so many vehicles on the roads pumping out vastly higher quantities of harmful gases than is…or at least should be…considered acceptable.

But herein lies the problem as what VW has pretty much conclusively proved is the way in which there’s really no sense in pointing the finger of blame squarely at every single older car on the market, as there are plenty of newer cars out there doing more damage than their dated counterparts. Indeed, studies suggest that approximately 50,000 people every year lose their lives to conditions that are in some way caused or aggravated by excessive vehicle emissions, so whichever way you look at it there’s clearly a serious problem to address.

Nevertheless, it isn’t a problem that’s going to go away simply by punishing anyone and everyone with a car that’s older than 15 years, for example. Instead, common sense dictates that it makes far greater sense to go after the worst offenders – sadly this would not be nearly as simple for lawmakers as rolling out a blanket ban on older cars.

Think of it this way – it’s one thing to force members of the public to scrap older cars that haven’t been looked after and are general health hazards, but what about owners of classic cars who’ve meticulously looked after their rides and spent a small fortune on keeping them as clean and green as possible? Should the two be classified under the same banner? Or would it be necessary to pen a series of complicated exceptions?

And the same also goes for individuals who technically do not need anything larger than a Smart car and could probably get by without a car at all, yet still insist on driving gas-guzzling off-road vehicles and ultra-inefficient sports cars. There’s technically no justification...at least in a technical sense…for such individuals to drive these kinds of cars and contribute to the problem, so shouldn’t these be forced to give up their cars as well?

So really the long and short of what we’re getting at here is that no matter how many strong worded and one sided reports and opinion pieces hit the headlines, progress really isn’t going to be made until some kind of universally beneficial and workable middle ground can be found. And as you can probably figure out given the above examples, finding said middle ground is likely to prove monumentally difficult, if not impossible.

Grants and incentives are one thing, but when you consider the fact that such a huge chunk of the population continues to struggle to heat their homes each winter, it’s again an idea which in the real world simply isn’t going to work on a broad scale.