Speed limits: A myth?

Credit: richardmasoner/Flickr.com

I took a road trip earlier this week to return to my academic roots and educate some high school kiddies on what it’s really like to be a working, living, breathing, real-life journalist. This offered me the opportunity to open their eyes and minds to what it’s really like to be a paid writer and excel in the field. I had high hopes, I really did. Until I asked my kiddies how many of them wanted to be writers and only one raised her hand. Fantastic.

Inspiring the child(ren) aside, the journey to my academic roots was one full of fall colours and long, straight open stretches of highway.

Country driving in Canada during the fall season is absolutely spectacular and possibly one of the most scenic drives you can take. As the leaves turn every shade of red, yellow and orange, you feel as if you’re in a landscape painting. Every corner offers a brand new point of view, a fresh canvas splashed with colour and mystique.

How philosophical of me.

But the colourful trees weren’t the only thing that caught my attention on this long journey to enlightenment.

I’ve had enough speeding tickets to warrant using the cruise control as often as I can on the open road. Now, I’m not a little speed demon (despite what some might say), I just tend to lose track of how fast I’m actually going. And let’s be honest here, I like to press my right foot down (especially when the car I’m driving has some oomph under the hood). My speeding tickets were all valid and were all by mistake. I wasn’t rushing anywhere or testing the 0-60 or anything fancy like that, each time I was simply cruising along with the music blaring, oblivious to my surroundings and (quite obviously) the speed limit.

And so I started to think, as I popped the Subie’s cruise on at 119 (anything under 120 km/hr and you’re ticket-free on the radar here), how many people actually do pay attention to speed limits and who chooses those limits?

Recently, a road near my house upped its limit from 40 km/hr to 50 km/hr. It’s a residential street with runners and bikers often lining the sides. One of my tickets was on said road and was quite severe because I was doing 65 in the 40. However, had I been doing 65 in the now 50 zone, I may not have been stopped at all (come to think of it, yes, I would have because I was in a white Z4 and everyone hates me in a BMW).

Why is 50 acceptable there now? Why was 40 nixed? How come highways don’t just up their maximums to 120? Is it so that people won’t start cruising at 140 because 20 over the limit is OK? Why not drop the highway limits to 90 so people only do 110?

Oh and my most pertinent question: How the hell are you supposed to do 25 km/hr? This speed blows my mind. I’d be better off (and travel faster) if I got out of my car and pushed it. I realize this is in school zones and such, but really now. That’s a bit ridiculous. If you want me to slow down, install speedbumps (a topic for another blog, oh faithful reader).

While cruising along at 119, I was passed by many a car both dilapitated and brand new. Some were going so fast it was if I were in park on the road. And that also got me thinking…

Why don’t we have an Autobahn type road in North America? Is it because German driving skills are so superior to ours that they have the ability to not kill themselves on a road with no speed limit? I’m inclined to think that, yes, that is the reason.

Speed limits are there to protect us, and yet we rarely respect them unless we suspect a cop lurking somewhere in the shadows. The threat of a ticket scares us more than the threat of death at traveling much too quickly in our vehicles. That baffles me. And I’m just as guilty.

Speed limits seem to me to be more of a suggestion than an obligation. Please, if you don’t mind, could you try and do 70, cause, you know, we’d really appreciate it. K thanks.

Drive on (within the limits, of course),
– M.

~ by drivingmsmiranda on October 8, 2010.