Driving in London is rarely enjoyable. There is, of course, the interminable traffic – data from TomTom, the GPS maps company, suggests the city is the slowest-moving in Europe.
There is also the slightly peevish driving culture. Compared to the British, Irish drivers are at once cheekier and more polite – they might take liberties but they‘ll also let you away with your ones. London drivers, meanwhile, are joyless sticklers.
Then there are the 20 miles per hour (32km/h) speed limits. Like many cities, London has lowered its limits to barely above a crawl in many built-up areas. But here, they actually mean it.
I was driving at night in a van in moving traffic on the road bisecting Clapham Common in southwest London, fixated upon the 20mph signs. I had figured out that in third gear, the natural weight of my foot touching the accelerator – no extra pressing – was just enough to keep me within the limit.
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I drove up behind a cyclist and, giving him room to the side, went to overtake. I kicked the accelerator slightly to move the van past him swiftly and safely. At that moment, I was flashed by a speed camera. A citation for my crime came in the post – 24mph in a 20mph zone.
The Metropolitan Police gave me a choice: an unspecified fine (the minimum is £100) plus three points on my driving licence, or I could take a three-hour speed awareness course online instead. The course cost £98 – almost the same as a fine – and I knew the Met would never be able to register points against my Irish licence.
But I took the course anyway, out of curiosity.
UK speed awareness courses are like the prison in The Shawshank Redemption – everybody says they’re innocent. Paul, an older bus driver who was clocked on a motorway, was the only other male participant on my course, which started at 7.45am on a weekday morning.
The rest were middle-aged women who, like me, had all been clocked in 20mph zones. None were happy about it, and it showed. Kudi complained that she had been done for driving at just 23mph. She was even more innocent than I was.
The course trainer, John, said he was a former royal marine. He seemed too breathless and chirpy to be a commando.
“Why did you all choose to come on the course?” he asked. To avoid the three penalty points, replied the women, wearily.
“And why do you think police gave you the option?” said John.
“To make money,” said Lucy, whose demeanour suggested she was having none of John’s jauntiness that early in the morning. Lucy had slept it out for her original early morning course. They charged her another £42 on top of the original fee to retake it – £140, she sighed, for breaching 20mph.
John played a video designed to puncture the “hard done by” attitude of his 20mph violators. It focused on the impact on braking distances. It showed where you would stop if you were driving at 30mph and jammed on the brakes. At 31mph, you would still be travelling at 8mph when you hit the previous stopping point. What if that point was a pedestrian, said John.
He had a reasonable point, although he never showed us the corresponding calculation for 20mph.
Lucy was still having none of it. John paused the class as if to admonish an unruly child, asking her to participate and not be doing housework “willy nilly” around her kitchen, as her camera showed. “I was hungry,” she said, teeth gritted. Later, she disappeared for a full five minutes. John challenged her again, warning her she would be thrown off the course.
You can’t opt to do a speed awareness course a second time if you are caught speeding again within three years in the UK. John was effectively threatening her with three points on her licence. Eventually, a sullen Lucy relented and took part.
Of all the touchstone culture wars issues in Britain, the 20mph limit is one of the oddest. The limits are routinely portrayed by the political right as the over-reach of meddling left-wing politicians and environmentalists. Reform UK’s manifesto last year promised to scrap most of them.
London mayor Sadiq Khan, a hate figure on the right, is slated for London’s 20mph limits, even though many are brought in by borough councils. The 20mph limit is on the way in Scotland and has also morphed into a big political issue in Wales, where its introduction as the default urban speed limit has been blamed for trashing the devolved Labour administration’s popularity.
The Tories say they’ll scrap the limit in next year’s Welsh elections. Reform, meanwhile, could scrap the Welsh Tories, if opinion polls are correct. Lucy would probably approve.
