Wednesday 19 May 2010

Hypocrites

On the M40 this morning, who do we see? Why, it is the boys in blue, upholders of our laws and preserver of our safety on the roads.

But, I fear, an accident is about to happen? My speedometer seems to be indicating 90-ish. Surely I must be about to ram this conveyance of all that is legal, for they will not be exceeding the 70 limit?

Err, no; here we see the situation a moment later:

I seem to be still behind them. How can that be? Let us watch, and wait:

Yep, still behind them, still at about 90. Gosh, the police van must be doing 90mph?!

I plan to keep these photos on my phone in case a police officer gets shirty and tells me that speed kills, that exceeding a speed limit places you and all around you in danger. Feel free to do the same. Because the thing is, he was perfectly safe; his driving was polite and considerate, and I did (indeed) felt sufficiently safe around him to whip out the iPhone....

(Sometimes, I'm glad this blog is anonymous!)

8 comments:

  1. You are keeping evidence of your speeding offence on your phone, ready to show prosecutors? And you were using your phone whilst driving?

    Put in a complaint about the police van's driving by all means, but be sensible about how you do it...

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  2. Yes, point taken. Note, though, I only plan to use them if I'm already bang to rights!

    And I don't intend to admit that I took the photos... I may point out that there were on some blog somewhere which suggested that its readers may wish to download them :-)

    Put in a complaint about the police van's driving...

    Except that I think his driving was perfectly safe and reasonable; I don't think he personally should get his knuckles rapped. My whinge is the institutional hypocrisy of a system which eagerly prosecutes safe drivers...

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  3. You really should have flagged them down and made a citizen's arrest. After all, your car is fast enough to catch them. Disappointed in you, P.

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  4. I went along the M40 a few Sunday's ago it was just getting light and there was virtually no traffic. But there they were on one of these "reserved for police vehicle" humps between Wycombe and Stokenchurch, speed gun in hand waiting for someone to take advantage of the ideal motoring conditions.
    No doubt they hadn't met their monthly targets!

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  5. It was a van, M. There might have been several of them in there, and they're usually bigger than me. Just as discretion is the better part of valour, so cowardice is the better part of discretion. I bravely stayed back :o)

    EP - in response to a spate of accidents between junctions 1A and 2 caused by lorries (that were of course fitted with 56mph limiters), Thames Valley police are placing speed traps between junctions 4 and 8 to catch cars exceeding the 70mph limit. And no, I'm not joking. That is the official reason.

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  6. "And I don't intend to admit that I took the photos... I may point out that there were on some blog somewhere which suggested that its readers may wish to download them :-)"

    Heh!

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  7. I'm sure you know that - like laser printers - iPhones and other devices encode some date which allows the handset to be linked to the photo?

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  8. Really? Gosh.

    Fortunately, the images on my iPhone are indeed downloaded from a blog somewhere...

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