Pretty soon, parents won’t have to worry about their children playing ball games in the middle of the road. Even if the road in question happens to be the M1.

There’ll be no need to teach them the green cross code because they’ll be able to run across the road whenever the mood takes them.

This is good news for drivers too. There’ll be no more heart-stopping moments as little Johnny darts out from between two parked cars. Simply run him down and keep on going, safe in the knowledge that the little tike won’t have even been scratched.

The only problem is you won’t be driving a Morgan or a Noble or an Aston Martin or a Porsche or TVR or a Range Rover, or any big 4x4 come to think of it. Because all of these cars will have been outlawed.

Here’s why. By and large, European drivers are pretty good at missing one another while in their cars. But mainly because we’re so busy scanning the roadside for speed cameras, we’re absolutely hopeless at missing pedestrians and cyclists. As a result, about 8,000 die on the roads every year and a further 170,000 are seriously injured.

The Eurocrats have therefore decided to act. After years of making cars safer for the driver and passengers, car makers will now be forced to make cars safer for pedestrians too. The legislation will come into force six years from now.

Already, pop-up headlamps have been phased out. Time was when lights tucked away in the front wings were a sign of sophistication and cool, but with the passing of the Corvette and the Lotus Esprit no car has them any more.

Pity. I used to like pop-up headlamps, even though there were a few drawbacks. Like you couldn’t flash your lights to thank someone going the other way because by the time they were up and illuminated the other chap was already at home in the bath. Unless you were driving a Lotus, in which case they wouldn’t come up at all. Or they would come up but then they wouldn’t go down. Or one would come up and then fly off.

This, though, was nothing compared with the problems they posed for children in the street. Get hit by a popped-up headlamp and it was pretty much Goodnight Gracie. So now they’re history, and that’s just the start.

In future, long swooping bonnets that seem to be snorting the white lines off the road will be outlawed so that little Johnny’s hips aren’t broken in an impact. Bumpers will be huge and made from blancmange to protect his legs.

And the bonnet itself will have to be 3in above any hard points in the engine bay so it can absorb the impact of a head.

At the moment the wiper motors and the suspension mounting brackets are just below the flexible surface of the bonnet itself, waiting like Hollywood sharks to pierce anyone who comes their way.

There has been talk by Jaguar of fitting an active bonnet, which flicks up on absorbent mounts by 3in when the front bumper detects an impact. This may well work, but it won’t be cheap and it will go off if you park by touch rather than by sight.

You’d have thought that the big flat front of an off-road car would spread the impact over a larger area and be a solution. But apparently not. According to the Eurocrats, Range Rovers and Land Cruisers are the nuclear option, weapons of mass destruction, defcon 4.

So analyse all of this and you end up with a sloping, high bonnet. And that in turn will mean the driver has to sit higher so he can see where he’s going. And that will mean a higher roof.

A much higher roof, in fact, because now we’ve crossed over to America where they are still in the Dark Ages. Motorists in the States are happy to drive round with a sub-machinegun in the glove box and eat nothing but lard but they will not wear seatbelts. Maybe it’s because they consider it an abuse of civil liberties, maybe it’s because they’re too fat and lazy.

But whatever the reason, car makers who wish to sell their products in America will be forced to offer a driver the same protection in a crash whether he’d been wearing a seatbelt or not.

This means he must be seated far away from the windscreen and far below the roof. Couple this to the Euro legislation and we’ll end up with the Ford Tallboy and the BMW Wardrobe. Jaguar may well be forced to rename itself Giraffe.

This makes me very angry. Why should I be forced to drive around in a car with the aesthetic and aerodynamic properties of a bungalow, chewing fuel and paying through the nose for the privilege, just to protect some drunk who’s fallen out of a nightclub and into the road? And why do I have to have a cockpit the size of the Great Court at the British Library just because a fat slob in Ohio can’t get a seatbelt round his corn-fed gut? Actually, what makes me really angry is that I don’t believe these are the real reasons for the new legislation. I believe there’s a department in Brussels that was set up to address the question of road safety and then refused to disband itself when things went well. Now, you’ve just got a room full of bitter and twisted old crones lashing out at cars because they can’t afford one. Are they, for instance, going to make bus manufacturers change their designs? You can bet your left leg they won’t.

If they’re desperate for something to do, why don’t they turn their big guns on the accident blackspots of Europe. Greece, for instance.

Now, at this point there will be those among you who think this rant is a bit far-fetched and that car makers will find a way round the problem, because they always do. Well, I just have two words for people thinking along these lines — Honda and Civic.

In the respected Euro NCAP tests the Civic got three stars for pedestrian safety and came within a gnat’s of getting four (out of four). Experts say it gets to within 80% of what will be required of new cars in 2010, and all for an extra cost to Honda of just £6.50. Everyone is now saying that the Civic, with its sloping bonnet and tall roof, is pretty much what all cars will have to look like in the future.

It even does pretty well in a crash at protecting the person who bought it. In a frontal impact the cabin remained virtually intact, which the testers described as “remarkable”. Certainly it’s good news for the average Honda driver who, as we know, is likely to be blind, deaf and 2,000 years old. And therefore more likely to be in a crash in the first place.

There are other good features of this car, since we’re talking about it. It’s exceptionally well made, roomy, pretty good value and economical. But frankly, none of this matters.

By styling a vehicle this way, all of the features that give cars their primeval appeal are gone. There’s no animal aggression, no hint of latent power, and no beauty whatsoever. This means, in essence, there’s no sex and violence.

I want to drive around in a Terminator, not the heroine from an EM Forster novel. The Honda Civic, then, is just about the dullest car I’ve ever driven. But rest assured that thanks to the meddlocrats in Brussels, it won’t hold the title for long.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model Honda Civic 1.6 SE
Engine type Four-cylinder, 1590cc
Power 108bhp @ 5600rpm
Torque 111 lb ft @ 4300rpm
Transmission Five-speed manual, front-wheel drive
Suspension (front) MacPherson struts (rear) multilink
Tyres 195/60 R15
Fuel 42.8mpg (combined) CO2 157g/km
Top speed 116mph
Acceleration 0 to 62mph: 10.3sec
Price £13,013
Verdict Commendably safe but shockingly dull

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