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Freedom or folly?

9th September 2004
Page 13
Page 13, 9th September 2004 — Freedom or folly?
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Take a stroll with us through the little side roads of the transport world — the diversions and detours, the quirky, the quixotic and the downright strange...

In the ideal world that On the Margin has constructed inside its head, our word is law. Its as though the revolution has already come: Mick Hucknall and Celine Dion have long been stood against a wall and dispatched with a bullet between the eyes; Portsmouth has been dragged into the Solent and torpedoed: sweet cider flows freely from every tap; and our every wish is acted upon by a grateful populace. Sadly, its just another hallucination brought on by too many prescription tranquillizers and an unhealthy liking for furniture polish.

We've never found it easy to tell fantasy from reality, but it looks like we're not the only ones. Step forward Mark Cornwall, boss of Derby-based Car Parts Direct, who has called for Transport Secretary Alistair Darling to resign. Gasp. No doubt Darling has already drafted his letter of resignation on the back of this broadside from Mr Cornwall, who says: "I want to hear from motorists who have lost their driving licences, jobs and incomes and where their lives have been devastated at the hands of Alistair Darling and his cash-generating speed cameras."

Darling's error, it seems —other than putting up those horrible speed cameras that so persecute motorists is to think about banning radar detectors that help motorists avoid the cameras and therefore the fines. Cornwall even has stats suggesting that detector users are 28% less likely to be involved in an accident than non-users. But we have to question the morality of technology whose sole goal is to enable the user to break the speed limit without being caught.

We can sympathise to some small degree with the motorists whose lives have been "devastated" (hyperbole anyone?) by cameras, but the fact is that if you were breaking the law then you've only got yourself to blame, so stop bleating on about the injustice of it all as though you've been clapped in irons and horsewhipped. No mention either, we note, of the hundreds, nay thousands, of families whose lives really are devastated each year, with loved ones killed or seriously injured at the hands of speeding drivers. Keep taking the pills, eh?


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