OVER the years I have got more points than Andy Murray.
Only mine have been on my driving licence.
But I haven’t been done for speeding (touch wood) for a few years now and I put that down to speed cameras. Love them or hate them, they helped change my driving habits.
Yes I know they trigger bizarre driving habits with the car in front of you suddenly slamming on its brakes and then accelerating again as soon as it passes the camera. But that’s their idiocy. If you’re alert and driving sensibly it shouldn’t cause you too much of a problem.
But, that said, there is something cynical when speed cameras being mounted in places where they are more likely to fill council coffers than stop accidents.
They may be deterrents but it’s no surprise that drivers regard cameras as enemies rather than friends. So the move to insist that, from next month, local authorities publish accident figures from before and after speed cameras were installed is going to make fascinating reading.
But whatever they reveal – and, yes, I will be looking out for the one that snapped me going down a steepish hill at 1.30am doing 37mph – it doesn’t change the basic fact that speeding is always wrong. You and I should not be doing it and people could be injured or die because of our asinine behaviour. Whether cameras are there or not.
And, after all, how much time do you really save?
Speeding drivers remind me of Homer Simpson and that moment when he is told that a deep-fat fryer can fry a buffalo in 40 seconds.
“Forty seconds!” he exclaims. “But I want it NOW!”
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