Big mouth has an opinion (or several) on speeding fines (and parking fines and petrol taxes…).This time, though, he doesn't seem quite able to make his mind up which side he is on..
I was only doing 35! And, yes, it's a built up area, but this was at 1.05am, so there weren't many kids about. And it was an unmarked police car. Why don't they stop wasting our time and money, and catch the real criminals?
It's inescapable: I drive, you drive, he drives, she drives. The car (or moto, or quad bike, or bus or taxi) has become necessary. For many it is more: social statement, personal space, manhood, style. Cars are angels and devils; freedom and weaponry; life-takers and savers; they destroy the atmosphere and bring prosperity. Love them, hate them, or both, we never stop whinging about them. I never stop whinging about them.
There's lots to whinge about. There’
Road Tax, Traffic Jams, Parking, Speed Cameras,
Car Crime, -Joy Riders, MOT Costs, Speeding, Fines, Clamping, Insurance, Traffic Police,
Other peoples Driving, Petrol prices, Speed Bumps, Penalty points, Road Rage, Petrol taxes
Tax is always bad: who likes shelling out? Jams are a nightmare; commuting time doubled, planes missed, tedium, hassle. Crime various from a ludicrous pain-in-the-backside to a horrific nightmare, and of course other people's driving is dreadful. But speeding fines (and cameras, and points) are in a category of their own.
Respectable 'law-abiding' citizens (like me) really resent being done for speeding, as I mentioned above. I mean, for pity's sake, 35mph! It's hardly criminal.
Except, of course, it is. It is shitty being stung when you're generally careful; it's also unusual. The police don't often stop you for going a few miles over 30, anymore than they stop people doing up to 80 on the motorways (that being 90% of the cars on them). That's one reason speed
cameras are so hated: they catch you for breaking the law by even a little tiny bit, without having the discretion to let you off.
But that's the thing: it's still breaking the law. If the speed limit was 40, I admit it, I'd probably drive up to (or just over) that too. Ditto 50, 60, 70… As for there being no kids about, well, there weren't, but the fact that no-one was killed this time doesn't miraculously mean I wasn't speeding. Sometimes kids are out at night, or silly teenagers, or adults, or old people. In built-up areas people can viciously come out from behind cars, not looking themselves, wearing dark clothing at night and giving you no warning. That unfairly means that 5 mph over the limit can turn accident to disaster. You've seen the ads: chances of surviving a hit from a car at 30 aren't bad: at 40 they're lousy.
That impact measure is true for higher speed roads, too. During the petrol crisis the speed limit was lowered to 50 on motorways. It was a big success: it saved petrol and hundreds of lives. Afterwards they raised the limit back to 70: road deaths promptly went back up. Driving is the most dangerous thing people do. 3000 kids alone (and rather more adults) are killed each year in Britain on the roads. If the same death-rate came from trains or planes there would be a massive outcry, government inquiries, prosecutions, and no one would travel that way. Being drivers ourselves gives us a fake sense of control: I won't kill any kids because I'm a good driver.
Well, I'm not a bad driver. For a start I'm over…um…ahem…let's say 30. Acne and raging testosterone are things of the past. I still like to get where I'm going, but my mates are my mates and don't need to be impressed: I no longer need to speed to prove I've got lead in my pencil. For another thing I'm not in a job with a delivery schedule. If you've driven the Sayalonga valley road in the mornings, you'll notice the effect tight schedules have on the quarry lorries. The pressure makes them aggressive: they are bigger than you so they don't need to give you any quarter. Also, I'm not a salesman. Too many of the salesmen I've worked with combined tight schedules with rather desperate machismo and an addiction to status symbols. Pathetically, status symbols include points on the license, narrow squeaks with drink-driving laws and bad-boy-bad-driving stories. Great for a bit of banter down the pub, but it all stops being funny if the consequences come home. Here in Málaga, in April, nine Finnish tourists were killed, by a drunk and speeding driver crashing into their airport-bound bus. Nine lives, including that of a seven year old girl, just wiped out. In the UK, professional footballer Luke McCormick killed two kids (aged 8 and 10) and put their Dad in hospital in a 'serious condition' with his Toyota Previa and a stint of dangerous driving on the M6. Wealthy, young and male, macho driving probably seemed so cool; going slow seemed so dull and old. Until now.
Horrific, of course, but nothing to do with me and you. We don't drive drunk, we aren't young idiots posting wild races on public roads on You-tube. So why don't the police concentrate on catching those that do and leave us alone?
Money, of course. Bloody money. Government are never as keen on legal measures as when they can make a bit of dosh from them. Given the atrocious state of public transport, congestion charging is simply another tax, not an incentive for change. You won't see them using the money made to give people a real option, oh no. It'll be 'Thanks for the readies, pal: how the hell else would you get to work, ha ha ha!' If they made buses, trams, trains usable, they wouldn't be able to make so much. Just the same money scam is true in Spain. Don't stop in a no-parking zone in Cómpeta. I've heard rumours the townhall is now fining everything that does and doesn't move, to make up the finance gap the last administration left. That's helped by the fact that the pig's ear of building work there makes it impossible to know what road rules and parking applies.
Just so with the speed cameras. No discretion, no subtlety just bang 'you were travelling at 0.5 miles over the limit, here's your fine'. If they warned me that they were going to check I'd have slowed down. If the unmarked police car had been marked I would have slowed down. If CID only told me they were coming, I wouldn't have had the drugs and the shotgun out on the kitchen table…
Oops. Sorry. Didn't mean that last one. But yes, I suppose, the unmarked police car is legit. Complaining that it's unfair to catch you breaking the law, by catching you breaking the law without warning, is pretty stupid. Complaining that your crime isn't real crime is nonsense. Complaining that your crime is trivial and other crimes aren't is asking for a bigger penalty: you get fined for speeding, not sent to jail. Even parking illegally is still illegal, even if you put your hazard lights on and are only going to be five minutes.
Oh yes, parking. It's on stupid parking that I change my tune, especially in Spain. Parking in Nerja, Almuñeca, Torre del Mar, Málaga. Parking in the scary little alleyways of the white villages from Cómpeta to Daimalos to Canillas de Aceituno. It's not the 'lets stop all the traffic while I have an animated conversation with my friend on the donkey (haven't seen him in years!)' Spanish habit that get's me. It's the car-abandonment-as-parking. I actually wish there were more traffic police in Spain. No, seriously. Just to deal with the parking, nothing else. And I wish they would fine every last jeep, quad-bike and moto driver who parks in the middle of the bloody road, on corners, in front of gates, on the middle of the hatch markings before a busy junction, on zebra crossings so that people appear on them as from no-where, in the disabled spaces when they obviously aren't, facing the wrong way in alleyways you can barely swing a kitten in and smack next to my car in the proper car-park space, blocking me in, again!
So I suppose I'll stop whinging this time, pay the bloody fine and keep an even closer eye on what I'm doing. At least on my next trip home. Here, of course, there's the relaxed Spanish attitude to rules (and the higher death rate that goes with it. So, if I get that Mazda MX-5 I fancy, I might just open her up (once I've crawled through the jams by Málaga) on the way to Seville. Jeremy Clarkson, eat your heart out…
