Consider the humble speed hump: just a mound or really more of a ridge, spread across the roadway like some mistake or oversight that somebody forgot to smooth out. We all know it’s there by intention, but what were they thinking?
It’s all about obstruction, of course, and why would anybody want to promote that, in a world where the smooth trip, the fast trip, is what we’re always after? Who will ever forget the Jet Smooth Ride, Chevy’s big pitch back in 1961, later made into a song by the Ominous Seapods (“with your top down”), which all but a few of us may have long forgotten or never even heard of?
Smooth as a ride in a jet plane, and don’t we all wish we could travel everywhere at those incredible speeds, or something close? If you think this sounds silly, look around: people everywhere, moving across the land- or cityscape as fast as they can, never close to jet speed but in their hearts that is their true wish, and no wonder they’re frustrated so much of the time!
For better or worse, the best solution to all this goes back to the Germans in the early 1930s, with their “controlled access” autobahn. Imagine, a road where you can just let ‘er rip, and no speed limit! Of course, leave it to the Americans to fulfill this dream on the grandest scale possible, with the Interstate Highway System 30 years later, spanning a continent. Of course there were speed limits, but any enforcement of these was easily circumvented much of the time by those willing to take precautions, and nowadays it seems flagrant defiance of the law appears to succeed as often as not. Let ‘er rip!
In stark contrast, the speed hump stands in complete opposition to all that is smooth and speedy and good, an impediment invented by the devil to generate a bumpy ride at best, and even worse, one that slows you down, and what could be worse than that, and what’s the point? Most folk’s first experience of them was probably in a parking lot somewhere, where the point seems obvious. Speed in a parking lot is asking for trouble, which of course never stopped some people from doing anything.
But it seems enough people noticed that parking lots are full of people walking around, with dogs and babies in strollers, where there are also sharp corners with lousy sight lines, made all the more worse in our modern age where everybody drives a truck or tall truck-like conveyance, at least in North America. A parking lot also happens to be a place where people are backing up as often as they’re moving forward. So maybe too many vulnerable people got bumped or the insurance companies got tired of paying off too many claims, whatever. The point is that these humps started to appear in parking lots here and there, and suddenly you had to slow down, even if it violated every fiber in your being. Victims of this travesty boldly asked what the problem was with a few fender-benders (or sometimes worse) now and then, or the occasional mowing down of somebody in the wrong place at the wrong time? Hey, everybody has their unlucky moments!
Maybe that’s what this is all about: too many violated fibers in too many driver’s beings, all of them long ago seduced by that Jet Smooth Ride and much more by the need/thirst/passion for speed. Add to that today’s frantic world, moving along as it does at the speed of electrons whenever it can, with everybody having places to go and things to do, all of those places spread as they are over a vast landscape. This is especially true here N America, where everything is far apart and hard to get to, with more and more people in the way every day, most of them in other vehicles. Any impediment to a fast and smooth trip is an abomination, and along with speed bumps there are those slow-moving idiots with a death wish, employing no vehicle at all to get around, about which nothing more need be said.
Back in the day of the Jet Smooth Ride, that other mantra arose, the life you save may be your own. That one was pounded into our consciousness by the National Safety Council, with their boring annual numbers of traffic deaths, which never seemed to register much in the national consciousness. First we didn’t have seat belts, and then we got seat belts and later those damn inconvenient shoulder belts, even in the back seat which made no sense. The dreaded fatality numbers went down though none of us stopped to cheer. We were in too much of a hurry trying to get someplace, whatever it took often as not, but don’t forget to buckle up! Then the numbers went up again and isn’t that just the cost of doing business?
At least up to now, the speed hump scourge, thank heaven, has been relegated to the occasional parking lot or service road or whatever, leaving any slowing-down on the real streets to the power of the law and drivers’ sense of responsibility and commitment to public safety.. This has all worked splendidly up to now and surely we all feel safer than ever out there, right?
Well, maybe not so much in my neighborhood, or pretty much all of the neighborhoods in Boston, or even way beyond Boston, perhaps even yours. The reasons for this, and the public outcry about it, have gone on forever, and will not be belabored here, but what seems to have accelerated lately is the awareness that enforcement of traffic law has become a lower priority than ever among those responsible for handling it, and drivers have been responding in kind, in what has come to be described as the Wild West. Back in those days justice often was determined by whoever had the fastest gun; getting ahead in Boston traffic means having the fastest reflexes and making your own traffic rules, though nothing can slow a trip down more than a collision, but then those only happen to other people.
Enter the humble speed bump, something not humble at all with the right political backing in place. Call it passive enforcement, where the concept of “passive” turns out to be anything but. You want to speed along the narrow residential streets of my downright claustrophobic neighborhood, where traffic enforcement is essentially non-existent? No radar, no officer-in-blue anywhere in sight, or none interested in whatever you’re doing with your car. They’re too busy with real crime.
Well, as Betty Davis once offered in a totally different context, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” The operative word here is “bumpy,” and let’s just see how fast you can go and how bumpy it gets, for sometime soon the damn things will be sprouting everywhere, like mushrooms after a heavy rain. Watch out if you’re in one of thoselow slung cars, the ones where the springs look broken, those very ones that seem to always be driven by somebody who must be really late for some engagement somewhere. Maybe you’ll need to drive somewhere else, or slow down if you live here, which may be the whole idea. Call it justice.
While the conversations about “driver responsibility” and “better enforcement” go on and on around the country, as they always have and probably always will, here in my neighborhood this radically different approach to safety is underway, and just might be an idea whose time has come, one that may spread across the whole city, eventually. The current political powers-that-be are unashamedly progressive in these matters, some might even say outrageous or even insane, or maybe even Unamerican.
This, in a city that has long promoted bike lanes and “road diets,” whereby streets get narrowed or entire lanes get removed completely, all in the pursuit of safety, whether you’re in a vehicle or not. It might just be true that if things slow down, everybody is safer, but what about the frustrations of those seduced by speed and traffic flow, and isn’t that almost everybody? What has this world come to?
It is also a fact that on any of the nearby autobahn-style roadways, of which there are many, the same lack of enforcement prevails for the most part, and if traffic allows, let ‘er rip. Ninety on the Mass Turnpike is not at all unusual these days, and of course in Germany there are still roads where there is no legal speed limit at all, where you can really find out if your Porsche or Lamborghini tops out at 180, as they claim. But you better know what you’re doing, something you’ll figure out soon enough, or perhaps you will realize you haven’t when it’s too late.
But in the near future, when negotiating the humpapalooza on our local streets, the laws of gravity and physics will prevail, and any attempts to violate those could result in damage to your vehicle or even losing control and damaging yourself, as well. Some drivers will no doubt figure out ways to minimize the negative effects, as the need for speed runs powerful and deep, but many more should begrudgingly acknowledge that you can’t fight City Hall, especially when it’s piling up asphalt in ways that deny jet speed and where that Jet Smooth Ride is only achievable if you slow down. A side benefit of this is the gift of time, in which to notice people crossing the street up ahead and other drivers generating the usual mayhem at the next intersection that now won’t startle you quite as unexpectedly.
Maybe you’ll even discover a new peace of mind, so long as you can let go of the fear of not getting to your next stop on time. Much of the world claims Americans are too hung up on that one anyway, and a world full of speed humps might be a great therapeutic aid towards resolving it.
