“How can you not have insurance?”
“Because I spent my money on the Clapco D29, the most impenetrable lock on the market today. It has only one design flaw, the door must be closed!”
Speed limit ends
In a bold move, the Inter-governmental Panel on Roads Excellence (IPRE) has decided to abolish speed limits for private vehicles in the UK. Ministers opting to trust car drivers and motorcyclists to ‘do the right thing’ instead.
Mick Adams is the IPRE chairman:
"We’ve had a good long chat about this, and we’ve decided that speed limits don’t really work. After pouring through enormous amounts of data and statistics, we came to the conclusion that everybody who owns a car or motorcycle has broken the speed limit, effectively making them a criminal. This criminal behaviour has to stop, so we are taking these measures to reduce the crime levels in the country.
We’ve also noticed that people demand their freedom, and if they feel their freedom is being taken away, they kick up quite a fuss. So we’re taking a new and radical stance here, but we think it will pay off in the long run, and we think people will behave better once they are asked to make their own decisions."
Mr Adams continued: "Another point which became evident was that the majority of drivers, even my own chauffeur Bob, pay no attention to speed limits. They drive as they see appropriate for the given conditions."
The news is a U-turn from recently announced policy suggestions to reduce the rural speed limit to 50mph, a move which allegedly has some support from some people, somewhere in the UK, although as yet this bold claim has not been substantiated.
"We have for far too long tried to control the public with traffic laws, policing, and speed cameras. Speed cameras clearly haven’t made any difference to safety. The public have realised that the cameras were only ever about raising money anyway, so their game is up, so to speak.
The laws are almost all based on the assumption that people are stupid, irresponsible and need to be controlled, rather like an unruly child. If we treat people in this way, then should we be surprised if we evoke from them the very behaviour that we are trying to prevent? Instead, we’ve decided to trust people to take charge of their lives for a change. They’re adults, and should be treated as such."
Mr Adams apparently had the revelation when introduced to parenting for the first time:
" I realised when I had children of my own, that the fastest way to get them do do something I didn’t want them to, was to tell them that they couldn’t do it. They would always go out of their way to prove to me that they were in charge, even if they didn’t want to do it in the first place.
Strangely, when I let them know they were in charge of their own lives, and let them do their own thing, they started to behave like the little angels that they are. People are people, some are little, some are big, but we are all born with the same knowing, that we are free, and if people try to control us, we don’t appreciate it once little bit."
The IPRE have also unveiled plans to scrap traffic lights in the majority of city boroughs, adopting a ‘naked streets’ structure, where pedestrians and cars and cycles co-exist. "This model has been trialled in Denmark and Holland with great success. It seems when people are asked to look out for each other, their behaviour softens and they become less confrontational, as no party has the ‘green light’ to proceed"
It’s not all hands-off, however. Notorious accident black spots are being addressed significantly to improve access and visibility, and to give road users the best chance to negotiate the hazards safely. Drivers who have had accident at these locations will be asked to help improve them for future use, rather than the usual trick of putting up a speed camera to raise money, improvements are actually going to be made to the sites. Works will be funded by government taxation from the road fund licence and fuel, the majority of which is currently spent on areas other than the highways.
"To improve road surfacing, and thereby passively improve safety throughout the country, at least 80% of revenue generated from fuel tax will be spent on road resurfacing and road improvement schemes such as; signage to warn motorists of dangerous bends, restructuring of notorious accident black spots, resurfacing of slippery, worn out roads with better quality tarmac, even the use of new ‘quieter’ tarmac to reduce noise pollution where new roads are required." said a representative of IPRE.
Motoring organisations have applauded the news, and will be lobbying the Driving Standards Agency to include new items in the training and testing of drivers and motorcyclists. Motorists in turn have applauded the new ‘common sense’ approach to road policy, which they feel is long overdue. One man said:
"It’s about time, really. The speed limits are outdated, and nobody really obeys them anyway. If the government wants to be taken seriously, they need to behave in a credible way, this is a step in the right direction. When they spoke about reducing the national speed limit to 50mph, I nearly pinched myself to see if I was dreaming. Whichever minister suggested that has clearly never driven in the countryside. Why do so many MP’s insist on legislating on subjects that they have no experience about?"
There was also talk of developing a British equivalent of the Nürburgring. Newly available noise abatement technology is making the preliminary planning process go much smoother, and the result is far less likely to bother local residents.
Andrew Goodman
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