Speeding

Last week, Gordon wrote a small piece on driving too fast.

I too drive fast – when the situation and environment allow, anyway. One day I’ll get stopped for it I’m sure, although I’m normally also pretty aware of what’s going on around me – and what’s coming round the next bend, or over the next peak of the road.

Admittedly, at the end of July I thought I’d possibly been had twice in one journey. The first was a speed camera on a bridge over the M4. I’d driven down to Chippenham for an interview – a minimum four hours of driving each way – and was on the way back. I came round a corner and there it was on a bridge, although still a fair distance away.

The second was closer to home, the A11 on the final stretch back. Again, coming over a peak on the road (not that Norfolk has peaks as such, but there’s a number of dips in that stretch of A11) and there it was, still one dip/peak away.

I don’t know the range of these cameras, where they’re focussed in order to get the best details. I don’t know if they have a specific focus point, or if it’s flexible – I assume it’s somewhat flexible, to account for road conditions and topography, and all that jazz.

What I do know is that wherever they were focussed, those cameras weren’t focussed on the places where I first saw them. By the time I got into whatever their focus-zone was, I was legal.

On both occasions I was travelling between 85 and 90mph. The road was pretty clear, the weather was fine (bright sun), and everything was safe. But still, well, I was speeding, and at least 15mph over the limit. Oops.

If I had been tagged on either occasion, I wouldn’t have objected, it would have been entirely fair. In some ways, I got lucky by not being caught – although in some ways I’d also argue that it was because I was aware of things in the distance.

I’d like to say that those events made me rethink my driving speed. But if I did, I’d be lying.