Today, with my post, I received a speeding ticket. On the table next to me is the three part letter which contains the words “evidence”, “offence”, “prosecute”, and a photograph of the rear of my car cross-haired. I was doing 38mph in a 30mph village, mid afternoon on the way home from the work Christmas buffet. It will be a £60 fine and three points on my licence. It’s my first traffic offence in 15 years of driving and my first brush with the law ever, and it’s knawing away at my insides.
Before I go further and explain my feelings I must say that I know I was breaking the law. I’m not making excuses. I know that someone is umpteen times more likely to die if you hit them at 38mph than at 30mph. I know that I was caught and so I must face the consequences. I know all of this. I know the dangers of driving too fast and of driving dangerously.
But that’s why I’m churning with bitterness.
I’ve spent the last few weeks driving at way below the speed limit because I’ve been scared of the fact that the roads around here don’t seem to be gritted properly. I’ve been the one who has a line of cars behind him through 30mph zones because he’s keeping to the limit and everyone else is getting impatient. I’ve been consciously trying to stay to the limit at all times, on housing estates, country roads, through villages and on dual-carriageways and motorways. To be honest I’ve been pissing people off doing it, if the amount of tail-gating of my car is anything to go by. That 38mph must be, in all honesty, the only time I’ve broken the speed limit during December. But this isn’t a new phenomena – I drive to the speed limit 95%+ of the time. And I know you can say that it only takes 0.01% of the time to kill someone but compared to the speed-obsessed morons who blast around the country with no regard whatsoever to any limit I’m an absolute angel. There are grandparents in Rover 45s who drive faster and more dangerously than me.
To be honest, it’s the box I now conveniently fit into that irritates me as much as anything. Male. 32. Sports car. Speeding. And it’s such an inaccurate picture of the way I drive. It’s not always been the case but on the whole, and certainly for many years now I’ve been calm, I keep my distance, I don’t race around like there’s no tomorrow, I am a safe driver. Or I was. Now I’m a criminal. For pity’s sake Helen drove around faster than me in her one litre Micra!
It’s not going to last long, this bitterness. I don’t think so anyway. When I manouvered Helen’s car forward about fifteen foot and the seat-belt light flashed at me I wanted to take an ice axe to it but it will pass. I didn’t keep to a speed limit, and there was a camera, and I am to be punished. But. Every time from now on when I’m still keeping to the speed limit and some git is again right up my arse trying to bully me into going faster, or next time I witness as I do every day a piece of dangerous and irresponsible driving which goes completely unnoticed by the authorities there is going to be such a bitterness in the pit of my stomach.
