Why should all traffic have to slow down when 99% of it is law abiding citizens who'd rather not have their vehicles damaged, have to brake and cause polution and reduce their fuel efficiency?
Last year 2.3 million speeding tickets were issued across the UK. Over 6,300 per day. This was met with the headline "Fury as record 2.3 million fines dished out' in one of our most popular newspapers (bet you can't guess which one).
What is the message that we apparently take from this? According to the paper it should be, 'how dare they catch us breaking the law and doing something demonstrably dangerous'. And lets be honest, the number of actual (unrecorded) speeding offences committed is probably hundreds of times that number - which is a bit scary.
This is why Councils and communities end up having to implement physical measures to try to slow people down. Because people do, constantly, break the speed limit. Meaningfully or not. And the consequences can be grim.
Please, lets not pretend 99% of drivers are angels, they absolutely are not. Indeed, very few are. Most need to be dragged kicking and screaming to change their ingrained bad practices.
BTW I'm not claiming to be holier than thou on this, its all to easy to speed, especially in urban areas - unfortunately the very location where it can potentially do the most damage.
All that said, I'm also not a fan of the Stockport Road humps. I'm particularly unconvinced that humps represent a realistic solution on distributor roads, where traffic volumes are already substantial. Indeed, the current scheme smells of a quick fix, stimulated by the opportunity to spend some free government cash, rather than a targetted response to an obvious problem. There are better ways to try to reduce speeds and make drivers more cognisant of their behaviour, but they are often treated with suspicion or bemusement by the average motorist - as they are a 'change to the norm'.
