A Tangled Web

Getting the Hump



Bus drivers in the Berkshire town of Reading are threatening strike action due to the discomfort they suffer when driving over more than 1,000 speed humps per day on a particular route. The article got me thinking about how much British roads are cursed with these monstrosities, which are put in place only for the sole purpose of damaging a vehicle's suspension rods.



Speed humps are a comparatively new phenomenon in the UK. I first noticed them around the beginning of the 1990's on suburban streets in South London. Since then they have become frustratingly omnipresent features on our thoroughfares, and a reminder of just how much we British car owners are persecuted for our vehicular pleasures.



Local authorities apparently install these carbuncles to curb 'speeding' cars. I doubt very much whether it occurred to the people concerned that the section of society which always drives at excessive speeds - namely the morons under 21 who drive Ford Fiesta's fitted with tinted windows, wide exhaust pipes, Formula 1 Pirelli tyres, music systems capable of 40 thousand decibels, and leatherbound shirt buttons instead of conventional steering wheels - are hardly going to be bothered with curtailing their supersonic speeds, notwithstanding any street furniture designed to encourage them to do so. Meanwhile, the vast majority of decent drivers are forced to navigate and negotiate hundreds of speed humps every day, and pay for damage caused to our cars when doing so. Disgraceful!!!