And anyway, it now transpires that speed isn't the issue at all because just a few days after Neil Lyndon received his cheque for talking nonsense, official figures revealed that excess speed is responsible for just five per cent of death and serious injury on the road.

The government hit back straight away, of course. They have a big speed-camera industry to support. But even they were forced to admit that 66 per cent of accidents have nothing to do with people going too quickly.

There was some debate in the Isle of Man recently about whether there should be speed limits, and the Minister of Transport was unequivocal. "If someone can prove to me that I could save a single life by imposing limits, then I shall do it". But no one could. So he didn't.

The facts, then, are clear. A third of accidents are caused by teenagers who don't really know how to drive yet, and a third by pedestrians who roll out of pubs and fall into the road.

You could ban Top Gear, of course, but I suspect that if you really want to save lives, you would be better off raising the age when you can take a driving test to 19, and erecting barriers between the road and the pavement outside pubs.

Speed is only a very minor factor in all of this, so why, then, has there been such a torrent of criticism of three blokes fooling around in an old aircraft hangar once a week?

You don't see anyone blaming the plethora of DIY programmes for the huge number of people killed by power tools. So why are they queuing up to blame us for the 150 or so people killed by speed each year on the road?

Well, it's not really an attack on us, I suspect. It's just another misguided attack on the middle classes. I mean, if you look at the environmental campaign it's not aimed at rusty old Ford Orions in Sheffield or fat lazy slobs in Glasgow who can't be arsed to put loft insulation in their roof space, or recycle their bottles of stout.

No, it's aimed at school-run mums in expensive 4x4s, and people who go on expensive foreign holidays. Environmentalism, in Britain at least, has been hijacked by what we used to call class warriors from the loony left.

And Top Gear is pretty middle class, really. We talk about dinner parties, lament the demise of fox hunting, plainly have no sympathy for Mr Blair, or Mr Cameron's eco-stance, and then we have the effrontery to report in glowing terms on a car that does 4mpg. In the world of the modern-day media, we're not just odd. We're bloody dangerous.

And what's more, one of us has now had the temerity to be involved in Britain's fastest-ever car crash - and live.

They've always said that speed kills, but Richard Hammond is living, breathing proof that it ain't necessarily so.

Read James May's article

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