A short essay from the British Spectator. Remember, they use MPH. 80mph is nearly 130kph. I deduce their top speed is like our 110kph. And apparently, you don't just get points- there's remedial education involved.
Oh, and to save you looking it up, Lurpak is like a tub of modified butter.
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Why speeding is good for us by Alec Marsh
What’s your go-to speed on the motorway? Do you snuffle along at 70, slowing down the lorries in your Rover 75? More likely you cruise the middle lane on the cusp of 80 – just on the wrong side of the law, plus 10 per cent and then some. That’s what I like to do, along with nine out of ten of the other drivers I observe. Perhaps you’re one of the speed merchants in a grot-covered Beamer, or a fly-drenched Audi who insists on making the M4 a little autobahn when no speed cameras are watching?
That’s the joy of Britain’s motorways, there’s something for everyone. Aside from pensioners who accidentally stray onto the motorway on their mobility scooter in search of an Asda, no one voluntarily drives under 70. Seventy’s not the limit, it’s the threshold, like a blind in poker.
I can’t help thinking we should accept that a bit of moderate speeding here or there
Which is odd, isn’t it? Since as nations go, we’re a law-abiding bunch. Yet if we had the same approach to shopping as we do speeding, then you’d routinely see respectable lawyers, doctors or City types sweeping goodies into their trollies and attempting to bungle the whole lot out the door without paying. But somehow, because it’s in our cars – compartmentalised as a motoring offence – and most of the time we get away with it, it’s accepted. Speeding is not even frowned upon, like smoking with your kids in your car is now.
And that’s the point: it’s precisely because we live in such an incredibly law-abiding society that speeding is so appealing. It releases an essential dollop of dopamine and reminds us that we really are still alive and functionally autonomous; nudging 80 or even 90 on the motorway is the release valve that keeps the nation obedient. Could this feeble infringement be all that stands between civilisation and a complete and utter breakdown into anarchy? Quite possibly: tacitly permitting drivers to speed in certain circumstances where the risks are lower helps those same drivers to contain themselves where they matter much more – like when you’re driving near a playground or through the medieval streets of a market town.
Whatever some might assert, homo sapiens are competitive types – you only have to watch a game of croquet to know how quickly the mask of civility can slip. Fortunately, motorways, dual carriageways and thoroughly dangerous A-roads allow us to live out our competitive urges, thereby obviating the risk of exploring them in more damaging or sociopathic ways. Decry it if you will but getting ahead of the traffic makes me feel like a winner. At that moment, I feel like the Ayrton Senna of the Basingstoke bypass.
In a world where house ownership is a mystery to many and a pack of Lurpak costs about the same as a pair of shoes, feeling like a winner is a big deal to an awful lot of us. And you know what? Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it. If only Prince Harry sated his younger-sibling competitive urges on discreet motorway speeding, then perhaps he and his wife would still be living it up in Frogmore Cottage, not penned up in a California pad.
There’s another obvious motivator for speeding. Driving inappropriately quickly is fun: seeing the tarmac disappear so fast under the bonnet that it’s a blur; seeing the speedo tip to as-yet unexperienced highs; hearing the engine reach new pitches – there’s something inexorably joyful about it. Mr Toad wasn’t wrong. Saying goodbye to safety is a buzz, one that intensifies the closer one gets to death. After all, the fact of death is what makes life worth living. At its best, speeding is like a parachute jump or performing a loop-the-loop in a plane. Few things get the blood going like almost causing a pile-up on the M1.
Of course, when you do get stopped the punishment is a speed awareness course. I’ve done two of them over the past decade, one thanks to an ill-timed spree in my pal Bob’s midlife crisis Porsche on the A303. I loved them both. There is an unintentional comedy that comes with being in a windowless conference room in a cheap suburban hotel with 50-odd members of the general public – all being forced to learn the basics of road safety on a Saturday morning. It’s like being trapped in a dystopian Channel 5 documentary. What you discover is the scary level of road-based ignorance and motoring self-delusion out there (no doubt my fellow attendees felt much the same).
For this reason, I believe we could all do with a quick Highway Code refresher once a decade. But at the same time, I can’t help thinking we should accept that a bit of moderate speeding here or there, under the right conditions, isn’t really such a bad thing. Perhaps there is such a thing as good speeding – 80, say, on a motorway – as opposed to bad speeding, such as 32 in a 30mph-zone with a primary school or nursery close by. After all, if we are going to speed, we should at least do it responsibly.