For those of our readers who were personally affronted by quotes from Daily Mail yesterday, here’s a suggestion I read between the lines of the Guardian a couple of weeks ago.
The columnist Alexander Chancellor was caught driving at 35 mph in a 30 zone. It appears that when your speeding offence is relatively minor, you get an option of attending a special ‘speed workshop’ instead of getting points on your license. Nobody wants points of their license, so Mr Chancellor went along to the workshop. He wasn’t sure it was that good a way to spend his time:
…there is still the question of whether these “speed workshops” are useful.
People attend them for one reason only: to avoid getting points on their licence. And those who are given this option hardly deserve to be penalised anyway. They are drivers who have inadvertently allowed their speeds to drift up slightly above the limit; not the delinquents who roar through villages with the cheerful abandon of Mr Toad.
…As it is, the workshops are presented not as a form of punishment, but as a voluntarily chosen educational entertainment that you are supposed to enjoy.
Clearly, this will not do. What Mr Chancellor suggests instead, is that ‘minor’ speeding offenders are offered an option of a flogging instead of their points.
They would go to the police station after work, be shown to a soundproof room, secured to a frame, and given a number of strokes with a strap or a birch. Although preferable for some as a way of avoiding points on their license, this punishment would be clearly severe enough in itself that the drivers would think twice before foolishly drifting over the limit.
… OK, he hasn’t suggested it in so many words, but I did say I was reading between the lines.
OMG – That is what will happen to me (without the official police presence thankfully) if I speed, as I have, to my shame, been known to do. It’s top of the list of punishable offences at the moment and a much better deterrent than some silly workshop.
Sarah: So you speed? NOT good. NOT good at all.
No doubt it is inconvenient for him, but if you ask nicely I bet Abel would be willing to use his punishment strap in a preventive kind of way. I’m sure you would agree this is a better course of action than getting in trouble with the law…and your man. Being a ‘defence lawyer’ and all that, I’m sure you wouldn’t want a conviction on your file, after all….
And while he was at it, he could kill two birds with one stone so to speak and deal with comments in the last post….
Just a thought…and don’t bother thanking me. I LOVE to help.
Lol Rob – You are kind to “help” me like that, but please don’t worry, any speeding issues which need to be dealt with can be safely left to my man, no need to trouble Abel just now, especially with him being poorly and no doubt tucked up in bed with some hot lemon, his latest brochure for Saga Holidays and his teddy bear… and I’m sure I don’t know to what comments you refer from the last post, I was only trying to help… bit like you in this post!
…and anyway, the threat of punishment for speeding has slowed me right down, no other preventative measures needed, as I keep saying – I’m a good girl really, don’t actually ‘like’ getting into trouble and try to avoid it when I can
love Sarah – just off to polish her halo!
I’m given to wonder about tariffs. Six strokes for breaking the speed limit, then one extra per excessive mile per hour?
Or one could go metric. Ten to start with. One extra per extra km/h. I knew the metric system must have some advantages…
I’ve just driven home in complete paranoia after reading the above comment… wonder what the tariff would be for crashing due to spending the whole journey obsessively checking the speedo instead of watching the road and oncoming traffic?!
Didn’t go too fast though
I think someone with a finer legal mind than mine should possibly apply themselves to redrafting Schedule 2 of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, which is wonderfully entitled “Prosecution and Punishment of Offences”, and sets out the current tariffs for no end of road traffic offences including speeding and tampering……..with parking meters and the like.
Guardian or Daily Mail in terms of being affronted. That’s a toughie, they run each other close for me!
See Sarah: it works. Perhaps you should join Gerrard’s working party redrafting the relevant Act?
I actually tend to be a slow-poke when I drive (I’ve just simply never enjoyed driving, so I can be a bit like a granny in a car!) but I think if that was enacted, I’d have to try speeding just a bit … because that sounds so hot! 😉
Zille, it is an offence to contravene a minimum speed limit on certain roads, so you just never know….