Saturday 7 May 2011

How to slow cars

I live on a one-way residential street which is 20mph and has been "traffic-calmed" by the addition of road-humps.

Suffice to say that the number of drivers sticking to 20mph or less is dissappointing. The road isn't very long, and is quite narrow, but still some clever clogs manage to really put their foot down.

Except today, I saw a driver gingerly approaching each speed hump at walking pace and carefully negotiating the road. Why? Because they were driving a Ferrari that was so low to the ground anything over 10mph would have taken the front of the car off as it went over the road humps. There was something very satisfying by the normal trail of traffic being slowed by one of the fastest cars in the world.

So there we have it. If we want all drivers to negotiate our traffic calmed roads slowly and carefully we should give them all Ferraris....

2 comments:

  1. "some clever clogs manage to really put their foot down"

    I suspect these are people in company cars / hire vehicles, or various other assorted types of idiot.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Based on how sports cars in general are driven, I'd suggest that there are two general types of Ferrari driver- the aggressive, point-to-prove, egotistical show off who likes to rev the engine at 11pm on a Sunday night (same guy who tail-gates like a SOB on the motorway), and the guy who actually just loves cars and looks after them as if he were driving around with the Mona Lisa in the passenger seat (guy who's almost over-careful and doesn't care about being overtaken on the motorway because he knows he can destroy you whenever he feels like it). Thankfully on my cycle into work I usually encounter the latter. The idiots tend to be in Corsas, 4x4s etc, always in a hurry to get to the next red light where you catch them up again...!

    ReplyDelete