The government has a big road safety bill in the offing. Need we brace for impact? Perhaps not. As part of it, I understand, we’re likely to get lower drink-driving limits and tougher requirements for over-seventies to prove they are still safe on the road.

I’m sure most people would agree that these are overdue – but it’s clearly too simple to suggest that by targeting the youngest and oldest we can transform UK driving standards.

Putting aside fear of change for its own sake, we will be hoping there is more to Labour’s once-in-a-decade reform of licensing than some compulsory eye tests.

Still, I certainly wouldn’t agree with the anonymous UK coroner who claimed our licensing system is “the laxest in Europe”.

We are apparently one of only three European countries that allow drivers to self-report failing eyesight. Dementia and other conditions too. We shouldn’t be – but that sounds like a legislative tweak to me and fairly easily corrected.

Not like Sweden’s ‘A-traktor’ laws. If you don’t know about these, they might well make you feel at least a little better about how younger drivers qualify to be on UK roads.

In Sweden, you can ride a moped at 15 – but also drive a tractor. And, thanks to a modern vestige of laws more than a century old intended to make it easier and cheaper for farmers to put working vehicles into their fields, you can fashion a tractor out of pretty well any old passenger car you fancy.

These ‘A-traktors’ have to be limited to 19mph (although apparently the kids are finding ways to disable the limiters when they choose to). They must have only one row of seats, be fitted with a towbar and display a large orange warning triangle on the rear bumper.

They are allowed on any road on which the posted limit is less than 100kph (62mph), meaning no highways or motorways. And their popularity among young people has rocketed since 2020, when the laws governing their conversion and use were relaxed.