"Look Out! Speed Bump!!"

 

The Autobahn between Frankfurt and Cologne in Germany has no speed limits posted. If you like to drive at a sedate 110 KPH, you need to stay in the right-hand lane, or better yet, in the ditch; at that speed, you’re a highway hazard. In Mexico, speed limit signs exist, as do stop signs (ALTO, meaning Stop or Tall, take your pick, language learners). But the speed limit is whatever your vehicle and your nerves can manage, except governed by whatever is ahead, like side-by-side trucks, or a series of suspension-jarring speed bumps.

In Canada, a highway  passing through a town has reduced speed limits posted, and a flashing display will tell you your speed, will sometimes even flash you a happy face if you’re under the limit. In Mexico and in Panama (incidentally the only two Latin American countries I’ve visited) speed bumps are assigned the job of slowing down traffic. The sign warning of an upcoming speed bump, though, is too long to be read at 140 KPH (“obstaculo de volocidad por delante”) so the first indication for the novice driver in Mexico might well be a passenger or driver launched through the sunroof. An abrupt education in paying closer attention!

For me, The interesting question in all this lies in deciding how best to gain public cooperation for anything, anything as seemingly benign as not littering or as consequential as driving slowly through a village where a child might be running out into traffic at any time. Every strategy has, of course been tried historically, from persuasion, to punishment, to rewards, to sheer force.

I’m sure that if the penalty for making a U-turn at a controlled corner were legislated to be a minimum of two years in prison, and for exceeding a speed limit, a thousand dollar fine for each KPH over what’s posted, I would sell my car and stay at home … problem solved; cooperation secured. Many, however, might see this as a challenge to offend without getting caught, or just as a colossal infringement on their personal freedom, an impertinence in need of defiance.

I’m betting technology will see us all becoming law abiding citizens, at least on the roads and highways. Each car will be embedded with a chip that transmits the driving speed and sundry possible driving choices to a central computer, which also automatically adds pluses for good driving and minuses for bad driving and sends you a bill or a cheque at the end of each month based on a legislated formula. Just making up the formula could be a hoot

Road-use Statement for Rhoda Dendron for March, 2027

Driving 100 Km without once exceeding the posted speed limit …………………+10

Changing lanes without proper signalling ………………………………………….-10

Swearing at another driver………………………………………………………….-10

Using a cellphone while driving……………………………………………………..-20

Zipper-merging properly…………………………………………………………….+10

Total………………………………………………………………………………….-20

Credit/Debit………………………………………………………………………….-$40

Payable online at www.bigbrotheriswatching.com

 Take that, Mister “No one tells ME what to do!” 

Probably wouldn’t work, though; tech-savvy people would very soon figure out how to hack into their own cars.

But that’s pretty pessimistic, I admit. We don’t have to breathe tobacco smoke when in a restaurant anymore, and peeing in the public street is rare. Something works, even though it’s not been that long since, for instance, people assumed a right to light up a smoke wherever they wished.

I don’t think shaming would be acceptable as the key to cooperation either. That choice could mean bringing back some variation of that ancient humiliation device; Big Mac Donalson gets caught speeding through town and by way of a corrective measure, he’s tied to a post (or stocks) in the centre of town for an afternoon wearing only his jockeys. 

Speed bumps work. It doesn’t matter if you’re a private citizen commuting to work, or the Minister of Highways being transported by security to a high-level meeting, or a passenger in a fifty-seat luxury bus, or a bank robber in a getaway car; in Mexico everybody slows down for towns, intersections, construction like good little missionary kids. You might say that speed bumps have you administering your own punishment for your own offense … ingenious!

How to apply the principle elsewhere? Now that would take some thinking/planning beyond my inchworm imagination.

Comments to gg.epp41@gmail.com welcomed.