WE have all met him. He's the loud-mouthed motorist, the king of the road. There's one at every party, keen to vent his apoplexy at being pulled over by the police.

No matter that he was weaving all over the motorway while guffawing into his mobile phone, or speeding through a suburban rat-run at 50 mph. His retort is always the same: "So I said to him, 'shouldn't you be out catching criminals, officer?'"

This is when you consider impaling yourself on a cocktail stick.

Nobody takes any notice of this type. Except the Government. Judging by the way ministers have reversed away from their radical road policies, New Labour's focus groups (or should that be Ford Focus groups?) are dominated by whinging motorists.

In mythical Middle England, the white van man wants to see bobbies on the beat sorting out muggers, not wasting their time flagging down people going about their lawful business (at unlawful speeds).

So traffic officers have been whisked off the roads and on to the streets. The Government has decided that the police should be catching the "real" criminals, not harassing innocent, crazed drivers.

We all want the epidemic in street crime sorted. Nothing is more depressing than a never-ending litany of vandalism, muggings and burglaries.

More officers are being deployed in street patrols, which is undoubtedly a good thing.

But if these officers have been switched from traffic duties, we will pay a terrible price.

A spokesman from the RAC told Radio 4 this week that 15 per cent of the national police force were deployed on traffic duties in the 1980s. Today it is less than five per cent.

In other words, motorists are far more likely to get away with illegal driving than they were. And illegal driving usually means dangerous driving.

The result: road deaths have risen in two of the last three years. That toll can only increase as more motorists realise they have every chance of zooming straight past the law.

Anyone who drives along the single carriageway section of the A64 will have noticed a leap in the number of prats at the wheel (or at the handlebars). These guys cannot see any further than the bumper in front.

They may be part of a line of traffic that stretches all the way to Scarborough, yet they overtake whenever there is an opportunity - and often when there isn't.

Often they escape a head-on collision with moments to spare. Then they slam on their brakes and return to the speed of the prevailing traffic, having shaved mere seconds off their journey time.

When these morons get it wrong, they invariably wreck innocent lives. The damage done by a rogue motorist is often far greater than that inflicted by the yob who nicks a mobile phone, but that doesn't seem to matter to the Home Office, which has removed traffic policing from the list of core police duties.

The selfish driver is as anti-social as the vandal, and statistically far more lethal than the armed robber. Yet the State is virtually telling our law-enforcers to lay off.

Forget about speed cameras, they are no replacement for traffic police. CCTV is practically useless as either a crime-busting tool or a deterrent. There are thousands of these things watching roads across Britain, and yet all they do is capture ever more frightening footage of bad driving to fill up TV series such as Police, Camera, Action.

This Government likes to crow that Britain has more police than ever before. But this is an idle boast if police are forced to abandon one set of law breakers to chase after another.

Updated: 12:15 Wednesday, June 19, 2002