As legislation comes into force to ban in-car smoking with children on board, Simon Hacker asks how seriously any of us take the rules of the road

1 Itís been a long time coming, but earlier this month, England banned drivers from smoking with children on board, the only get-out being a roofless car. The ban was already statutory in Wales, while Scotland is considering the same move. The law carries the force of a £50 fine and, according to the British Lung Foundation, will be a positive benefit for the three million children exposed up until now to the secondhand smoke of their parents and carers. Forest, the smoking pressure group, was unsurprisingly against the change, saying it was yet more “micro-management” of individuals by the state – and that it was unenforceable.

2 The pro-baccies might have a point here: after all, there are many existing laws which seek to keep us driving safely but which are routinely transgressed. Chatting and texting via your mobile while driving, a law instigated way back in 2003, is still so flouted that the penalty has been increased twice from the original £30 fine to £60 and now £100, plus three penalty points on the licence. One US study revealed 70 per cent of drivers think nothing of using their smartphones while at the wheel, while 30 percent of Twitter users, another survey reveals, tweet “all the time” while driving. In the absence of self-driving cars, a cynic might say, how else is one to keep up with social media while attending to the chore of going from A-to-B?

3 Closer to home, the stats can be even more alarming. The road safety charity Brake revealed research this summer which paints a picture of UK motorists as a band of law-flouting risk-takers intent on doing whatever they like. Half of drivers questioned admitted breaking traffic laws, while half of these drivers (ie a staggering 25 percent of this survey) said they did it “with intention”. Drill down into those rebellious respondents and we find that there’s an even mix of those who feel there was no chance of being caught, or those who simply did not agree with the law and therefore saw no reason to obey it.

4 You can draw various conclusions from that picture, but it provides plenty of ammunition for the argument that a lack of visible policing of our roads, or the perception that the law isn’t present (regardless of its technological tentacles) encourages anarchy. Sadly, a headline case this year in Scotland is grist to any claims that hands-off policing is leading to UK roads that can escape the authorities’ attention. John Yuill, 28, died and Lamara Bell, 25, was seriously injured in a crash on the M9 near Stirling which was first reported to police, but not followed up for three days. Lamara died later in hospital. Police staffing levels and a failure to input the original alert were blamed for the catastrophic failing, while the incident has cast a shadow over modern policing policies in Scotland.

5 If drivers donít feel enforcement is out there, could this scepticism be rooted in something within us? Do we feel increasingly immune from the risks of driving that we see written so large around us? An Institute of Advanced Motorists survey in 2011 could shed light on this notion. It found that five per cent of the UK’s 37 million drivers don’t routinely wear a seatbelt, the real penalty for which is not, of course, the fine you might get if you are nabbed, but the hugely increased likelihood of death or permanent injury without this basic protection. Given that this is a keystone law that’s existed since 1983, adherence would hardly seem to be a matter of public habituation. Indeed, the worst flouters are aged 17 to 34 – by definition, drivers who have never known a different driving rule.

6 Ultimately, any belief that laws are for others to follow stems primarily from how far we have come in our journey with the automobile. It’s a cocoon, a hermetic bubble that separates us from life, an extension of our home, even ourselves, so advertisers tell us. Car designers have put their lives’ work into offering us the safest and cleverest transport they can imagine and, every year, every motor show, unveils the next sophistication. Cars empower us to believe anything is possible. Little wonder we are duped into a faith that makes us feel immortal.