Ian McMillan: Let’s all move quickly to life in the slow lane

He was steady. He’d ease the old Cortina away from the kerb like he was still on the Ark Royal and Barnsley Road was the South China Sea. “Gently does it,” he would say, climbing gently into second gear as passing motorists who’d achieved the dizzying heights of third or fourth gear tooted and gestured.

He didn’t care; after decades of being on ships that, no matter how fast they went, never went as fast as cars, he couldn’t care less about speed. Speed was for, as he called them ‘Mad Ikes’ who would zoom past us on motorbikes or, let’s face it, on pushbikes.

These days I really wish there were more drivers like my dad, however. These days I’m so glad I don’t drive. I think that if I did I’d get the slow driver’s equivalent of Road Rage: Road Chuntering, I guess you’d call it.

Let’s put our cards on the table before the gale of a backdraft from a passing car blows them away: there are far too many Mad Ikes about. And Madder Ikes. And Maddest Ikes.

I’m always a passenger in a car, which means that I can observe the behaviour of drivers from the non-threatening safety of my seat and far too many of them drive far too quickly and regard the speed limit as a work of fiction. Coming back from a day in Cleethorpes I was amazed, on the noisy M180, to see cars whizzing by at huge speed, then passing cars who were also travelling at huge speed. And the odd thing is, the drivers of those cars don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. The odd thing is that the drivers of those cars think that what they’re doing is normal. Well, it isn’t. It’s wrong. It’s abnormal. And, more to the point, it’s dangerous. Every driver, boringly, thinks they’re careful and safe. I’ve heard them talking in pubs and cafes and ringing up local radio phone-ins. They hold forth: they’ve been driving for years and of course they wouldn’t drive too fast past a school, except they might at night or in the school holidays, but on the open road, well they can let rip, and the speed limit is just advice, just a suggestion, isn’t it? Isn’t it?

Listen to drivers getting apoplectic about speed cameras. Watch them going puce in the face. See them bang their meaty fists on rickety pub tables. Of course speed cameras are just there to make money! Of course they’re just there to catch innocent people who are driving at one millionth of a mile above the far-too-slow limit! Of course, if we had no speed cameras at all, the world would be a safer place! Rubbish, of course, absolute rubbish. And yet we tolerate this: we nod and smile at the loud drivers who are so put upon with all these rules strangling their right to go at a hundred miles an hour if they want to.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped nodding and smiling. Far too many people are being killed and injured by people driving too quickly. I’ve got some plans. Purple Smoke is the first one: when someone is driving over the speed limit, a special gizmo on the car (I’m hazy about the actual details) will cause purple smoke to puther from the car so that the coppers can catch the miscreant with ease.

The second plan is Mass Pointing and Shaking of Heads. Let’s get children to stand outside schools and when fools drive by above the speed limit we’ll get all the children to point and shake their heads. Combine that with the purple smoke. And the free hats that say I’m a Dangerous Driver. And the speed limiters on cars that slow them down once they start going over the speed limit. Of all those ideas, perhaps the last one is the most sensible, the most do-able. I quite like the Purple Smoke, though.

Speed limits are there for a reason, you know. They’re there to stop people driving too quickly and killing or injuring people. They’re not to be ignored or laughed at.

We need a change of what people in sharp suits call mindset, and it’s not easy. We need to stop thinking that driving quickly is good in itself or is somehow neutral and has no consequences. The car, although it seals the people inside away from the world, is very much part of the world.

There’s a big Slow Food Movement around at the moment, as an antidote to Fast Food. Let’s start a Slow Driving movement, shall we? It makes sense.

Or maybe it doesn’t: come on,  drivers, let me know why driving  fast and breaking speed limits and  taking the mickey out of speed cameras is good. Pretend we’re in a pub: bang your fist on the table and tell me. I’m listening. Slowly.