FEW things impact on our lives more than the car. It is our friend, our refuge, almost our starship.

So when Philip Hammond, the Coalition Transport Secretary, declared that 'the war on motorists is over', we all heaved a collective sigh of relief. Here, at last, was recognition of what the car meant to us.

For years we motorists had felt ourselves a beleaguered section of society: milked for all we were worth; told that we were antisocial for not using public transport; told we were a menace to life and limb; and told also that we were polluters of the planet.

Never once did the-powers-that-be recognise what the car meant to us, and how we found them such a marvellous means of conveyance – and how we valued that it kept so many of us in work.

So 20 months into this government, we are entitled to ask where is the evidence that it intends to make good on its welcomed promise of a cessation of hostilities?

Motoring back from a Burns Night supper near Lincoln recently, I was struck by the number of newly-installed average speed cameras: dozens of them.

We were told that the whole matter of cameras and much else besides was going to be looked at, and that they were going to be confined to genuine accident blackspots – as was their original intention.

Nothing discredits a government more than broken promises. They do, after all, form the basis on which our elected politicians got their jobs in the first place, so in my view it is little different from lying in a job interview.

Almost immediately on my arrival back in Plymouth, I learned that Hush Puppy-booted Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, is to raise spot motoring fines by 66 per cent to £100. What a kick in the teeth that represents. And what an example of a government two-timing its electors.

What's more, it demonstrates to me a total disregard for the financial pain people are suffering right now, and only provides further evidence of how utterly out of touch with reality the political elite really are.

We deserve better than this. As I have said before in this column, our motorists are among the most considerate in the world and their death rate reflects that. But here in Plymouth, I continue to feel quiet fury at the way the transport authorities behave.

Take the Cattedown roundabout East End Development as an example.

Long drawn-out and hugely over-budget, it has recently been completed. They have, however, built a superb slip road bypassing the Embankment shopping thoroughfare. It is fast and smooth, without a single house flanking it, nor cross road or pedestrian crossing. Yet it is not fast.

Absurdly in my view, they have applied a 30mph speed limit and, just in case you are inclined to ignore this and travel at 40mph, they have installed average speed cameras.

In the approach to this development from the city centre along Exeter Street, there was a road which allowed motorists to safely escape 100 yards of nose to tail traffic, leading up to Cattedown roundabout. Motorists have been taking this exit for years to no ill-effect, but with the great benefit that it reduces the tailback of traffic leading to the roundabout. Now they are suddenly banned from this because it has been made one-way.

How many streets across the city have suffered a similar fate? Were the people who live in these streets asked for their thoughts on the matter? Were there accidents or fatalities that forced the planners into action?

I have spoken to people living in the street mentioned above, and they are furious that they cannot enter it any more from both directions. Yet all over the city things have been done to the annoyance of the people who have to suffer the inconvenience. Why? Because some jobsworth thinks it's a good idea, I imagine.

It was once possible to save time and relieve traffic on busy Plymouth Road by passing through the Woodford estate. But now vast numbers of road bumps – which are exceedingly difficult to be taken properly, and are often taken dangerously because of parked cars – make this route a nightmare. Again, locals say their views counted for nothing. It was imposed on them from on high – from our masters who know best.

I can only suppose that all over the city, and indeed all over the land, you would hear similar stories of 'solutions' foisted on communities with neither proper consideration of their feelings, nor proper consultation with them.

After all, they are the ones having to live on a daily basis with what I regard as these foolish, not to say costly, changes. And when mistakes are plain for all to see, there is invariably an arrogant refusal on their part to acknowledge them as such, much less to make restitution.

Far away in their ivory towers, they hold to the view that the man in the town hall knows best.

Tom Mackenzie is the author of The Last Foundling (Vanguard, £10.99) and writes each week on his blog, lastfoundling.com