If ever I needed confirmation of the utility of the 20 mph speed limit, increasingly common in our villages, towns and cities, it came at around 5 pm on Friday, as I drove home from a walk round beautiful Loch Leven. I swung into a connecting road between two arterial routes in the village next to my own, and fifty metres ahead of me was a toddler in nappies, unaccompanied, toddling down the middle of the street. I decelerated to dead slow, pondering what to do. A hundred metres further on I’d decided to stop the car in the middle of the road with the hazard lights on, get out, lift the child off the road, and then decide what to do next. I was well aware that this could be a hazard for me, too. Man abducts child.
Then off course the traffic behind me, who couldn’t see what was going on, grew impatient. PAAAARRRRP! Clearly somebody hadn’t paused to wonder what hazard might possibly lie ahead. I was obviously just some loonie driver crawling along in a reverie, oblivious to the world around me.
Fortunately, some pedestrians at the end of the road saw what was going on, and a lady with a kindly demeanour stepped out to rescue the child. We exchanged bewildered shrugs. I switched the hazard lights off and proceeded on my way.
Anecdotally, my personal experience is that the environment of the highway is becoming increasingly toxic. But this is not mere anecdote. The following day (as I was walking the seven hills of Edinburgh), two pedestrians were killed in separate incidents in Glasgow. Ten people have died on Glasgow’s roads this year, compared with seven for the whole of 2022. Yesterday, a cyclist who had been involved in a crash in Glasgow in May, died in hospital. But it’s not just Glasgow. Nearly 2000 people were either killed or seriously injured on Scottish roads in 2022. There were 174 deaths.
In Glasgow, a team of road safety experts, together with the police, have visited the various crash sites, and advised the council that no action need be taken. That is to say, there was no apparent intrinsic danger evident in the environments of the crash sites.
It seems to me that the problem is not environmental; it is cultural. You only need to drive into Glasgow from the north east to see this. There is a 50 mph speed limit on the M80 commencing about seven miles from the city centre. It is almost universally ignored. In fact, exceeding the speed limit on this stretch of motorway is completely pointless, because shortly after you merge with the M8 the road is “up” and diminishes to two lanes. There is a bottleneck due to road repairs which have been going on now for years.
It is evident that the majority of people who choose to break the speed limit consider that the limit is inappropriate, and that people who adhere to it are merely being pedantic. The trouble with this is that you now have two classes of driver, one observing the rules, the other flouting them, and there is no agreed convention as to how to use the highway. That is to say, there is no universally accepted culture. In other words, there is anarchy. And then people wonder why 174 were killed on Scottish roads last year.
You see the same phenomenon no matter what the speed limit is. 75 mph in a 70 mph motorway, 35 mph in a built up area. And the 20 mph limit is blatantly ignored, even by the police. I was intrigued by the brouhaha surrounding Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s recent speeding ticket, and her attempts to seek the advice of the Civil Service on how to organize a one-on-one speed awareness course. The Civil Service couldn’t help, so she declined the course, paid the fine, and took the penalty points on her licence. In my opinion she should have joined the class and taken the course. She might have learned something useful. At the time, BBC Radio 4 interviewed the actor Nigel Havers, who apparently has taken the course three times.
Three times?
Does that signify he has been caught speeding three times? This would imply he has learned nothing. Or maybe he found the course so interesting that he wanted a refresher, twice. This is unlikely. Mr Havers pronounced the class “boring”. He did say he learned that driving on a motorway at 77 mph is “apparently very dangerous”. Duh. I was disappointed, because I rather admire the stance he has taken on drivers who sit stationary with the engine idling. He makes a habit of tapping on the driver’s window and politely asking them to switch the ignition off. I have previously in this blog strongly advised Mr Havers not to attempt this in Glasgow. It would be like telling somebody not to drop their half-eaten kebab in the gutter in Sauchiehall Street. At any rate I wish he could get as exercised about speed as he obviously is about exhaust fumes. (Incidentally, on June 1st, Glasgow city centre’s low emissions zone became active.)
There is in fact a parallel between the flouting of speed limits, and the flouting of laws against littering, and these are both evident in the extreme in Glasgow. Both bespeak a lack of ownership, because of a lack of a sense of belonging. If you don’t have a vested interest in your community, if your opinion doesn’t count, if the establishment is elsewhere, then why bother? Not my problem, mate. The council can pick up the litter. And road crashes only affect the feckless.
Speeding should carry the same stigma as drink driving. We need to adopt the attitude of the airline industry and say, “Safety is our highest priority.” We need to take ownership of the problem. This is my problem, because it is everybody’s problem. It is a combined, collegiate activity. A sense of belonging. The Germans have a beautiful for that. Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl.
Frustration plays a role, often pivotal, in many road crashes. People tail-gate, grind their teeth, and pull out on blind corners. When it all goes pear-shaped, they are inclined to blame the driver ahead who was adhering to the limit. Here is a tip to avoid frustration. I’ve mentioned it before, but I will not apologise for this reiteration. I call it the CAHOOTS Doctrine: Campbell adds hours on over the schedule. Estimate the duration of your journey. Then add on half as much again. If it takes ten minutes, give yourself fifteen. If it takes two hours, give yourself three. Then you will find yourself happy to adhere to all the speed limits, and if you find yourself behind a slow moving farm vehicle, you will thank the driver for putting bread on your table.
jamescalumcampbell 