Have you ever driven 40 mph or more on a street posted at 25 mph?
I have — though I have attempted to restrain myself in recent years — and I suspect most Maryland motorists have done so at one time or another. Like many of us, I've been lucky, too, in that I've never been caught speeding except on a major highway.
But a demonstration this week of how even what most of us consider minor increases in speed affect the ability to stop for a pedestrian brought home the reality of how dangerous it is to flout the posted limits.
What's really been lucky, for most of us, is that a child never darted out in front of us while we were speeding.
For the most part, the events that law enforcement and highway safety officials stage from time to time announcing crackdowns on bad driving are boring affairs that follow a tired script. The P.R. types assemble a bunch of uniformed officers in front of their vehicles as a photo backdrop while the bored cops try to feign interest as high-ranking police officials bluster about how the law is going to make those bad drivers pay.
Officials intone slogans such as: "Speeding is aggressive driving — and it stops here." Nobody takes them too seriously because everyone knows the chances of getting caught are minimal in an age of traffic enforcement cutbacks.
Speeding stops here? Ridiculous. A little routine speeding amounts to aggressive driving? No way. That's what those maniac kids do who race down the highway, tailgate and weave in and out in a fit of road rage.
But at a news conference last week, those traffic safety nannies put on a pretty convincing demonstration that speeding — even at levels we think we have a right to get away with — is dangerously aggressive behavior.
They did so with a simulation that put a wire-mesh dummy the size and shape of a 10-year-old boy in the crosswalk on Camden Street in front of Orioles Park — just the kind of place you might expect an errant child to dash onto the road.
A professional driver showed what happened when he slammed on the brakes at a predetermined spot 28-feet from "Bobby" at 25 mph, 35 mph and 40 mph.
At 25 mph — the prevailing speed limit in the city and most suburban neighborhoods — it was a close call but there was no contact. At 35 mph, the car plowed into the dummy with enough force to assure a touch-and-go helicopter ride to Shock Trauma. At 40 mph, the car drove the shattered Bobby another dozen feet farther down the street with a thud that said flesh and blood would not have survived.
That's not 60 or 70 or any of the crazy speeds teenagers reach as they terrorize residential neighborhoods. That's 40, a speed routinely reached by harried soccer moms and dads rushing to work. It's only 3 mph more than the 12-mph of immunity given drivers before speed cameras can issue them a $40 reminder that they're going too fast for a school zone. At 35, they're home free as far as cameras are concerned.
It's strange, but otherwise moral and rational people who care deeply about their communities are deeply aggrieved when called on their speeding offenses. If a cop tickets us at 35, it's "shouldn't he be somewhere catching murderers?" If a camera catches us at 40, it's "Big Brother," or "we didn't get a fair warning."
We don't see ourselves as menaces. But we are. Ask someone who wasn't so lucky, who was going 10 or 15 or 20 mph over the speed limit and who couldn't stop in time to avoid a pedestrian. That thud heard when the car hit Bobby probably sounds a lot louder to the person behind the wheel of a car that actually hits a kid.
. So I have to give it to the police and the Motor Vehicle Administration and the State Highway Administration. That was an effective demonstration. (Readers can see video of it at:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-aggressive-driving-20100709 though it doesn't show the impact at 40 mph.)
It would be wonderful if every driver had the chance to witness such a demonstration, but that's probably out of the question. At the very least, it should be seen by legislators, District Court judges and my fellow media creatures — all groups in which sympathy for the speeder often seems to outweigh concern for the possible victim.
There are no perfect drivers on Maryland roads. I certainly can't promise that I won't slip up sometime and let my foot get too heavy in a residential neighborhood.
But if that happens, and a speed camera catches me, there will be no howls about the injustice of it all. The old-fashioned speed limit sign is all the warning any driver is entitled to. I would be grateful to have my error pointed out to me at the meager cost of $40 — and not at the price of a dead or injured human being.
Does that sound self-righteous? Some think so. But it's a lot easier to live with that label than with the sound of a thud echoing in my mind.