(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Just got back from a gig in Essex. Can't sleep after the 90 minute drive back - the M11 is clear, but back into London, even at two-thirty in the morning, there is traffic. Might have got flashed by a speed camera coming out of the Blackwall Tunnel as well. Bugger. Especially as I was dead careful on the motorway and didn't once stray beyond a hundred (even then I was being overtaken by other folk travelling faster). That's the M11 for you - ninety in the nearside lane, at least after two in the morning. My Honda's apparently good for over 130mph, but I wouldn't dream of taking it to that.
We're coming to the end of the period of unlimited use of the motor car. The Autobahn's of Germany will soon have restrictions on them. The Motorways of Britain will have more cameras more frequently, and we'll all be watched by satellite. America will follow.
After the first oil crisis America never got back to it's old speed limits. Apart from the racetrack, there's nowhere where a person can really put their foot down. Probably sensible, but the frontier spirit had another set of shackles attached at that point.
In England we're used to being watched at every corner. GPS now means we're being watched in our cars.
When they finally start watching us when we shit, I'll know the time has come for me to die, or turn into Jeremy Clarkson, whichever is worse.

Comments

[megiloth.livejournal.com]

Apart from the racetrack, there's nowhere where a person can really put their foot down

The highest posted speed limit in Missouri on rural highways is 70 mph, but the best thing I've done is find somebody really tearing up the highway and get in behind them. If they're doing a consistent 90 mph+ then the chances are they have a radar detector. I drove aboot an hour straight a couple years behind a Corvette averaging 95 mph. I made some pretty good time on my trip back :)

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

The national speed limit in the UK is 70mph, but few people take any notice of it. We're not really that much of a law abiding country - pass a law and we'll look for a loophole, and even the leader of the main opposition party was almost sacked from school for smoking weed.
This is as it should be.