If you were there
I feel your pain. By now you too will have received your letter from the
Gardai, informing you that you were speeding. You’ll have two points on your
licence and be €80 lighter after paying your fines.
The speed limit
was 50 kph and I was doing 64 kph, which means my car was moving at the
mind-bending nosebleed-inducing speed of 39mph in the old money.
So yes, I'm guilty
as charged. It's a fair cop Guv, as they say where I'm from. I'm a criminal, a
dirty filthy law-breaker, so slap those penalty points on my licence before my
insurance premium starts to look affordable.
Actually I’m not
sure that speeding counts as a crime. It’s more of an offence. If there is a
crime being committed here, it concerns the way that our collective insurance
companies will be creaming money off our bad luck.
Yes, I did say bad
luck. There are places where it is essential to have a speed limit of 50 kph.
I’ve seen the TV ads that tell us if you hit a child at 50 kph it has an 80%
chance of survival, but if you’re travelling at 80kph, it has a 50% chance of
fatal injuries. That’s a pretty powerful argument, so I wouldn't count myself
‘unlucky’ if I was caught speeding in a built-up area, where children might be
playing.
But this wasn’t a
built-up area. This was the road from Galway to Moycullen, as it pushes through
Bushy Park. Yes, there are houses along it, big homes lived in by people who
have quite possibly lobbied to have this speed limit imposed. The Camera Van
was parked in the lay-by in front of the church which, to be fair, seems
permanently busy with visitors, worshippers and events.
So impose a 50kph
limit for 300 metres each side of the church, to protect the innocent humans,
and let the limit beyond and before rise to a reasonable 80 kph.
How do I know that
others have been charged too? That’d be because I remember the precise time and
place we committed our collective offences.
It was a calm
sunny Spring afternoon, and I was driving along in a steady stream of traffic.
For once, there was nobody tailgating. Not a boy racer in sight. All of us
drivers were keeping well apart from each other, easily in range of our braking
distances.
The world
felt like an unusually safe and civilised place. I think I was whistling tunelessly along
to a Mozart violin concerto, daring to enjoy myself, and then I saw the Camera
Van parked by the church.
At the time I
remember thinking to myself that if they nicked me, they’d have to nick
everyone else in that steady stream of traffic. Little did I suspect that they
intended to do exactly that.
Really, if you
want to catch as many people speeding as possible at once, just take an aerial
photo of Quincentennial Bridge at any off-peak time. Nobody keeps to the speed
limit there. Indeed, if they did all drive at no more than 50kph, it would
cause such consternation among other drivers that it might cause reckless
driving.
Mind you, there
are times when slow driving really works. When the same bridge is clogged with
traffic, the dreaded wave pattern of logjam comes into effect. The light goes
green up ahead and a ripple of movement slowly makes its way down the traffic
jam, causing us all to move a little; stop; move a little; stop.
Studies have shown
that if we all just crawl along at a minuscule rate, the wave pattern disappears
and we all get home earlier. In the UK they proved that if everyone drove along
busy motorways like the M6 at 40 miles an hour, average journey times would be
halved.
Seems mad, because most of the time the majority of the traffic is cruising
along at 80mph, but when the sheer volume of traffic collects together, causing
everyone to stop, that makes the average speed collapse.
In the USA, where
they understand speed, all cars slow to 25mph around schools, and when the
school bus flashes its lights, everyone stops. It’s heartwarming and efficient.
Also Americans can
be charged with the offence of slow driving. Bloomin’ brilliant!
Back when I
lived in north Co. Mayo, I used to get stuck for miles behind a Father Jack
lookalike who drove his Berlingo van everywhere at 22 mph. After miles of
frustration, I’d risk life, limb, stone walls and wildlife trying to overtake
him on narrow country roads, faced with the peril of oncoming tractors bearing
down on me at speeds in excess of milk floats.
Crawling into the
town behind his van one day, I saw a friend of mine laughing by the roadside.
"What’s so funny?" I asked.
“The expression on
your face!” she replied, explaining how the auld fella in the van was blind.
“Yeh, he must be.
Shouldn’t be allowed on the road.”
“No, no, he is
blind! Really and truly blind! He drove that same road into town every day for
35 years, so now that he has lost his sight he just drives it by memory.”
Looking into her
eyes to see if she was pulling my plonker I saw only earnest truth. Now that I
think of it, quite a bit of my life back there reminds me of Craggy Island’s
crew.
What really bugs
me more than anything else about being nicked for this speeding offence is that
we were all driving safely.
If I’d wanted to
drive faster without breaking the law, I’d have to wait until I reached the
extremely dangerous bends a little further along the road, where the sign
proudly and slightly madly declares you can go 100kph.
Once again, the
law is an ass, but I did the crime, so I paid the fine.
©Charlie Adley
09.04.14.
No comments:
Post a Comment