Like many motorists, I spend a great deal of time stuck behind other vehicles or simply slowing down for speed cameras and different speed zones. All the while the TV bombards us with messages: ‘Kill your speed, not a child’, ‘Think - stop!’ etc. Meanwhile congestion continues to grow and we all get frustrated as more and more of us sit in traffic for hours at a time.
Why this fascination with slowing us all down? Is it too crude to suggest that if speed limits were much higher we would all (excluding O.A.P.’s that pull out 10 yards in front and remain at 25mph for the remainder of your journey) be able to get to our destinations much faster? The net result being more people actually at their destinations, rather than travelling slowly to them and therefore easing congestion.
Let’s think further along those lines: instead of fining those driving too fast, we could fine those that are too slow or not travelling at the new minimum speed limit. I dare venture the majority of dangerous overtakes are perhaps currently due to frustrated drivers stuck behind someone driving too slow (boy racers will always be idiots, we’ll have to suffer them regardless).
Then what about safety? How about this; instead of lecturing drivers about driving too fast on roads (which is where I personally expect to find cars driving fast), why not educate children not to run into the road in the first place? I mean, what happened to the ‘Green Cross Code’ man? ‘Look both ways’? ‘Don’t cross between parked cars’ etc?
This isn’t meant to make light of people’s own tragedies. After all, most people know someone who has lost their life on the roads. However sometimes accidents are simply that, no? Whilst this may seem an inflammatory entry, such a response is not my intention. Merely to question whether the current obsession with road safety, at the expense of traffic expediency is really making a positive difference to our lives?
