Car-dependent design of our towns and cities, probably helped by years of Top Gear re-runs, has conspired to make ‘motorist’ a semi-political identity.

Particularly on the Right, there is a certain kind of energy to be harnessed from the frustrations of the huge proportion of people who drive every day, and the impositions placed on them. 20mph zones, Ulez, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, etc.

These are less common, however, than the annual ritual dance around car parking fees.

Canterbury City Council (CCC) has long come under fire from political foes and the public for its charges, some of which are the highest in the county. At £3.70 an hour, and set to increase to £3.80 from next April, the topic ignites the passions of residents and businesses alike.

Whitstable businesspeople told us this week the council is “greedy”, the move was “diabolical”, and so on. As a committed pedestrian and non-driver, I struggle to feel sympathy for the alleged plight of the driver.

I pay council tax for roads I do not use, while still having to pay for public transport when I can’t walk to my destination. I am strong in leg and spirit, but nonetheless concerned by the intentional revving of engines when I cross beneath the fading green man; the highway equivalent of somebody refusing to give way and colliding with your shoulder.

The problem is not one of greedy councils fleecing the public, but of car-dependent towns, poor public transport and cash-strapped local authorities operating in tandem to create a situation where many have little choice but to drive, and councils have little choice but to charge them for parking. While this car-dependency is produced largely by public policy, drivers still have to take some personal responsibility for their choice of transport and its negative consequences.

It is almost cliché, yet nonetheless true, to point out that cars are polluting, potentially dangerous and damaging to health and architecture over the long term. More worrying, though, is the effect the car has on the psyche of the driver itself. The increasingly unhinged political energy surrounding issues of personal transport both derives from and reinforces a sinister tendency - sometimes known as ‘car brain’.

In an oft-mocked extract from his book Minima Moralia, Theodor Adorno argues that the design of car doors and other technology “is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men”. Those of us who travel by shoe-leather have long suspected that the automobile makes people more lazy, impatient, selfish and irritable. The very idea of walking from the suburbs to a town centre and back becomes a fetter on your day’s plans. Anything standing between you and your right to travel dead-on the national speed limit from A to B at all times becomes an intolerable oppression.

“Which driver is not tempted, merely by the power of his engine, to wipe out the vermin of the street, pedestrians, children and cyclists?” Adorno asks. Perhaps he overstates the case by saying this is proto-fascistic, but drivers must admit that their vehicles have a tendency to bring out the worst in people. The private vehicle is a portable solitude - a nice place to unwind after work perhaps, but also by nature profoundly antisocial. Even in a traffic jam, which could cultivate some form of solidarity in wretchedness, you sit all alone, together.

People rightly have a sense that they should be able to move unhindered throughout their own towns and country. Any charge placed in the way of this is felt, in a roundabout way, as an imposition on your freedom. Ideally, we would live in a country where public transport is ubiquitous, near-enough free of charge, and dependable; where people are not put off by the idea of a walk and a short wait en route from one place to another.

By virtue of privatised, poorly-run public transport and a planning system which recognises this by enshrining the car as default, we do not live in that country. For those who truly have no choice but to drive, who have mobility issues or a job which requires it, the frustration is more understandable. While designed to encourage people out of their cars, increased parking fees can sometimes have the effect of simply warding people away - according to the anecdotal evidence of small business owners.

This is certainly no good thing for businesses, and councils should consider it when deciding parking prices. But there are very few people who are entirely unable to use public transport or their feet for their day out, rather than a car.

Refusing to go somewhere rather than paying a bit extra to park or using public transport is a choice which no public authority compels you to make. If the idea of walking further, or filling some time at a train or bus station, perturbs you that much, your problems run deeper than an extra 10p per hour. Millions of people manage to do it every day and aren’t much the worse for it.

Much about modern Britain makes driving the easier, default choice, and that needs to change; public policy can do a lot on that front, but individuals still make their own choices. Mobility, speed, convenience, and comfort are the historic achievements of modern transportation - and we should strive to achieve them in a more social way.

Until the hourly parking fee exceeds the minimum wage, and clearly reduces town centres to wastelands, my sympathy for those who refuse to imagine a day out without a car is minimal.