Speed. It’s the core of all things motoring. Things like performance and comfort and cornering are important too, but in my mind, these are all simply accessories to help reach one goal – to go as fast as is physically possible. It’s addictive too, as the numbers on the speedometer thunder skyward your veins and arteries are filled with adrenaline, making you want to push harder for longer, white-knuckled and determined to see just how fast the car can go. I love the sensation of burying my foot deep in the carpet in a fast car before being forced back into the seat as the engine sings and shouts like Brian Blessed mid-climax, smearing the view out of the window like a spaceship going into hyperdrive. It’s addictive. We’re forever trying to push our cars past their top speed, convinced that if they push on just a little longer, they’ll go that little bit faster. That’s how I know the earth isn’t flat, because if it were, all these people trying to push their car that little bit faster would have fallen from the edge whilst trying to do so.
I probably should add that you should only speed when it’s safe and legal to do so, and doing it on any public road is not only stupid; very often it’s also lethal and not just to the driver. As addictive as getting a shift on might be, only do it at a racetrack. Not a high street. Don’t be silly.
Anyway, even in the most basic tiny engine biff about cars, getting a shift on can be exciting, sometimes even more so than when you’re in a monstrously overpowered hypermobile, because you have to really work hard to get the thing to move out of its own way. In a comfortable mile-munching car like an E-class Mercedes, you don’t really get a sensation of speed because you’re cocooned in a comfortable chair with smooth suspension, sound deadening and plenty enough power under your right foot. But when you’re in something like a 1.1 litre Peugeot 206, you have to make a real effort and hang on tight to get any real speed, and when you are really getting a move on, you know about it. I remember when I owned a Peugeot 206 "Look", which was one of the more basic trim levels; I would occasionally take it onto the motorway, where once it got up to 70, I knew about it as the engine screamed its head off trying to keep up with the other cars. That car really needed a sixth gear.
The thing is though, nowadays at least, it’s actually quite hard to really get a move on in this country, and I don’t mean speeding; I mean actually getting anywhere, like a constant war on the motorist.
Let’s start with the never-ending roadworks and the apparent temporary traffic light orgies that seem to be taking over every single road in the country. You’re pretty much guaranteed to get stuck at one set if you’re really lucky, but they travel in packs, so more than likely, if you’re at one set of temporary lights, chances are there’s more close by. I am convinced that down here in the hills of the Mendips, they are testing every single temporary traffic light in the Western Hemisphere. I was out the other day, and in the space of two miles I had four sets of temporary lights, two road closures and a contraflow.
Then of course there are the speed limits, which, whilst they are obviously there for a reason, some very much justified and are there for the safety of everyone, but I’ll admit there are the odd ones that make me wonder. A single-track backroad in the countryside will have a national speed limit on it, meaning you have to play blind-corner roulette whilst also worrying that the person coming the other way might be doing two times the speed of sound. Meanwhile a road with two clearly marked lanes and no joining junctions will be slowed down to 20 miles an hour and littered with more cameras than the Grammys. I understand most speed limits, but one or two I do question, but I’m sure they have their reasons.
Then, of course, as well as the speed limits, there are the speed cameras. Now I am not going to sit here and write and complain about them, saying how if we didn’t have them, everyone would speed all the time, but the truth is, they wouldn’t. No, my issues with them are the potential distraction they cause, even though most of the time we’re not speeding and definitely not speeding intentionally. But occasionally people do stray over the speed limit, only by a few miles an hour, but are still driving perfectly safely. But in the eyes of the camera officials this is enough to warrant sending a fine that would pay off Greece’s national debt and adding a million points to their licence. As a result of this, people tend to pay more attention to their speedometers than to the road ahead, because they’re terrified of accidentally drifting over the limit and ending up having their kidneys repossessed. I totally get that there’s a zero-tolerance policy towards speeding, but still, is little Dorothy on her way to the charity cake sale who's strayed two miles per hour over the limit really a danger?
Then there is, of course, my biggest hatred. The never-ending traffic. Thanks to things like the never-ending construction of countless houses and the fact that households have multiple cars (mine included), the roads are pretty much constantly clogged up with everyone trying to get around. And because they’re building no end of new-build houses, cramming thousands of houses onto a site that used to be a pub, the roads can’t cope anymore. Our roads simply are not designed for the number of cars on the roads nowadays. And when they do want to update and change the roundabouts and traffic lights, or add more lanes, they close the whole road for seventy years and then redirect the already massive amount of traffic down yet another road that is not only not fit for purpose but also has temporary lights on it because of yet more houses being built near there as well.
Maybe it's time to get a bicycle.