speed
there is talk of a speed restriction for cars of 20 miles per hour in built up areas. the reason for this is that it could halve the number of pedestrian deaths a year.
seems reasonable.
not if you are a driver.
at this point i have to declare my lack of driving skills. the one time i tried to drive i quickly discovered that i would be very dangerous behind the steering wheel. i don’t have a problem with cars per se. quite happy to accept a lift (thanks paul!) and i still have very fond memories of phil’s 2cv (i am not sure i have ever forgiven him for selling it).
what i have a problem is, for want of a better phrase, car culture. car culture comes to the fore when there are discussions about such things as speed cameras or speed reductions. then all of a sudden the car lobby throws its toys out of the pram.
speed cameras are just means of making money, they cry. fine then just don’t speed and then the cameras end up costing the government money. see there you have a stuck a blow against the autocratic government. even better you haven’t broken the law.
oh lowering the speed we can drive at means people have to keep looking at their speedometers and not at the road. surely you are doing that if the limit is 30, 40 or 50 miles an hour?
accidents are noting to do with the driver or the car; it is all to do with the fact that there are not enough roads or the roads are old. oh that is fine we’ll just build more – we don’t need houses in urban areas just make way for more roads!
i have no sympathy for the moany drivers; especially as most of them think that clarkson is a bit of a hero. like their hero the drivers see themselves as promoting freedom, they are against the nanny state, they are fighting the good fight for liberty: “you’ll have to pry this gear stick out of my cold dead hand….” of course none of them admit to the fact they want to be boy racers and have visions of themselves driving very very fast and looking very very cool. except very few of them are lewis hamilton.
it is odd how most drivers seem to be able to drive within the speed limit and never get caught by speed cameras. obviously they are doing something wrong and are letting the side down.
2 comments:
The trick is to know where the speed cameras are - ask my sister she'll reel off all those on the A13 as quickly as me.
You just slow down for them and speed off again...should you not be driving so slowly as to make them irrelevant which happens regularly on the aforementioned A13.
In my new incarnation as a cyclist I love whizzing past the stranded traffic and beating the cars from Canning Town to Barking.
I love listening to the 'persecuted' car lobby moaning about traffic here in Edinburgh - its the fault of the council, the one way systems, the pedestrians, the cyclists. Never the fault of a lot of numpties who decide to drive ever growing streams of cars (usually with one occupant, a large number of them big-arse SUVs, obviously needed in a city) into the same space. And it never seems to occur to them they are all trying to squeeze their cars into streets laid out centuries before the infernal combustion chamber was invented and, surprise, surprise, they were never made for this traffic...
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