Having a fleet of vehicles on the road, I can't help noticing that speed "enforcement" has become big business. Traffic officials have really got high tech to slow us down on the road - because that is supposed to be the goal - right?
It's an interesting conflict between technologies.
The general speed limit has stayed the same in urban areas forever (well as long as I can remember, anyway).
The roads have improved. Heck, we have three lane dual carriageways that look like highways with a traffic light every kilometer or so with 60 km/h speed limits.
The cars have got better. We have radials instead of cross ply tyres. Suspension and roadholding is massively improved. We have disc brakes instead of drum brakes. In short, our motor vehicles can stop a lot faster than they used to. Unfortunately they can generally go a lot faster too.
And they do. Travelling at 100 km/h nowadays feels more stable (and slower) than travelling at 60 km/h some 30 years ago in a Mini Cooper.
And the great technological counter to slow us down - virtually invisible speed monitoring and recording.
It used to be that we knew we were speeding because a guy in police uniform used to jump out of the bushes and inform us of this fact. Before this camoflage era you could actually see the guys waiting down the road to check your speed.
Heck. That one worked for me - stayed under the speed limit every time, and the one time I did get caught I blame myself for not paying attention. If you're not paying enough attention you shouldn't be driving in the first place, right. I got off lightly and got better at not being distracted by attractive passengers. Lesson learnt.
So where is the problem? Why aren't we slowing down?
Is it the improved safety of the motor vehicles?
Is it the improved technnology of speed trapping?
Or is it the fact that we've moved on and speed limits haven't?
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