Peter Hitchens That infuriating speed bump? Your stupid driving put it there

SPEED bumps are solidified selfishness. They are there because far too many drivers refuse to be careful or considerate.

I don’t like them, but if they go, we’ll have to have something else.

I’d recommend taking those largely useless speed cameras away from main roads, and putting them on every suburban street instead, set at 20mph.

For a few months they’d make millions in fines. Then people might just change their behaviour.

I seethe with rage when I see the way normal, kindly, considerate people hurtle heedlessly down such roads at 30 or 40 miles an hour at the wheel of a ton of steel, rubber and glass.

What if a small child runs out into the road, which is almost always cluttered by parked cars these days?

Do they have any idea what might then happen?

Of how, without warning, they could be standing grey-faced at the roadside pleading with the paramedics for reassurance that their victim is going to be all right, and getting silence in return?

They act as if they don’t have any such idea. And yet, as I say, these are otherwise good people. Why is this?

I suspect it is because it is absolutely true that power tends to corrupt – and for most of us, the biggest taste of power we get is when we slide behind the wheel of a car.

The car advertisements sell us the idea that, cradled in our shiny toy, we need only to touch the gas pedal to be roaring along deserted roads.

The dreary truth, that most car journeys are slower than going by bicycle, waiting for lights, waiting at junctions, waiting for pedestrians to cross the road, crawling past roadworks, is hard to bear. Even if you’re in a Lamborghini, and most of us are not, you can rarely use the power you have.

So at the first hint of an even slightly open road, even if it’s a suburban street, down goes the foot.

This is fairly new. Until quite recently, the average family car accelerated like a pensioner. Its brakes were feeble. The absence of seatbelts and airbags meant a likely journey to hospital via the windscreen if anything went wrong.

But modern cars make selfishness safer, and offer temptations those sluggish old Hillmans and Austins never had.

And that is why we ended up with speed bumps. Because too many people drove angrily and selfishly, and the large part of the population who don’t drive quite reasonably didn’t like it.

The trouble was, the speed bumps just made them angrier, so they drove even more foolishly when there were no bumps.

If you don’t want speed bumps or speed cameras, just imagine what it would be like to hit a child at the speed you’re doing.

And slow down.