Blog

Why the rush to speed?

Lee Murphy, CSRP Manager

Like most of the country, I was driving home as the snow was falling last week. It was dark and a fair few inches of snow had already settled on the roads. Driving was, at best, challenging — so slowly, slowly did it. Approaching the dual carriageway that by-passes a local village and has a very steep gradient, I was fortunate that a gritter was in front of me. Great, I thought; I’ll follow this slowly down this hill as it clears the inside lane. The outside lane wasn’t even visible as no one was risking leaving their tyre tracks in freshly fallen snow. I’ve driven down that hill thousands of times, but never once in second gear! Keeping a watchful eye in my mirrors, I could see the long line of car headlights snaking behind me going steadily and keeping a good distance between themselves and the car in front.

Then, I noticed a pair of headlights not in line in my rear view — someone had chosen to risk the outside lane. I was amazed how quickly the white van caught me up and went whizzing past. Braver man than me, I thought. He wasn’t alone, soon after another white van went flying past just as we passed the stricken HGV that had failed to keep a grip going up the hill. To the left side, three cars had bumped into each other and were parked up. Just as I crawled passed these, an

HGV went flying past me down the hill, with little hope of stopping if someone pulled out in front of him. Madness.

It did set me thinking about lots of things, but mainly about what the rush was. It clearly wasn’t safe to be doing any kind of speed going down that hill: visibility was poor due to heavy snow, road markings all obscured by snow and cars sliding everywhere. What was the rush? Where did those drivers have to be that it couldn’t wait 10 minutes? Of course, we see this every day. Not in these extremes, but everyday nevertheless. The impatient driver harassing other drivers in front to either speed up, or get out the way.

We’ve just had our lowest number of people killed on our roads since anyone can remember, yet 42 people were killed on Cheshire’s roads last year. That’s 42 families lives changed forever; 42 circles of friends and work colleagues devastated; 42 knocks on the door by the constable. Speed would have a played a part in all these collisions. Maybe didn’t cause it, but simply the harder an object hits something then the more damage will be done. Most people as drivers or riders speed. By speed I mean go in excess of the speed limit given a clear road. It probably isn’t a conscious decision in most drivers, they are just keeping up with traffic and, after all, “10 miles an hour over the limit is sort of OK isn’t it?” There are those, however, who make the conscious decision to speed and speed excessively — we’ve all seen them. Scientists have shown us that just a 1 mile per hour reduction in our speed could be the difference between life and death. Given that, and given that thousands of people die on our roads each year, why are we all in such a rush? I know modern life is hectic, but think of all the times you’ve pulled that overtaking manoeuvre, only to hit more traffic ahead and the car you just overtook catches up with you. In reality how much time did that manoeuvre save you on your journey? None? A couple of minutes at most? The time taken to read this? Is it worth it? Was it worth risking your life or someone else’s to get down that hill in your van or HGV that tiny bit faster? How much quicker did they get to where they were going? Did they even get there?

The adverts currently on TV showing the driver haunted by the little boy he had killed really are a stark message to us all. Who would want that on their conscience? I got home OK, I was in no rush. I got to listen to an entire CD in the car and when I got home we built a snowman.