Instilling a fear of flying

My first-ever speeding fine arrived in the post recently, and I can have no complaints about it. The letter said I'd been spotted doing 43 miles an hour in a 30 zone; so, after a brief period of denial, my reaction was to hold my hands up and say: "It's a fair cop."

OK, part of me was thinking it was a pretty sneaky cop, or he'd have stopped me at the time of the alleged offence instead of breaking the news in writing three weeks later and spoiling my breakfast. That way, I could at least have attempted an excuse, along the lines of: "I didn't see the sign, Guard. I must have missed it while I was swerving to avoid the stricken old-folks' minibus stuck in the middle of the railway crossing back there."

But from further reading of the Garda letter, it was clear that there had been no policeman, fair or unfair, at the scene of the crime. I had been nicked instead by an automatic camera, of the kind now lurking in every second tree throughout the Irish countryside.

At any rate, the letter said the allegation was supported by "video and photographic evidence" and, although none of this was enclosed, the details of the incident sounded conclusive. I'd be prepared to argue that I was slowing down fast when the camera clicked, and that it photographed my bad side, as it were.

But I've decided to just pay the £50 demanded by my correspondents in the hope that they'll send me the negatives and that'll be the end of it.

Speeding is a bad thing, we all agree, and sane people will welcome indications that the authorities are getting serious about it. For too long Irish drivers have regarded the official speed limits - especially those pesky 30- and 40-mile-an-hour ones - not as binding laws, exactly, so much as useful guidelines; a bit like the best-before dates on dairy products.

The situation had been encouraged by the fact that at the other end of the spectrum, the upper speed limit was only a theoretical possibility on most Irish roads. It still is on some, with 90 degree bends and potholes the size of Hiace vans meaning you'd have to be airborne to reach the legally-allowed limit: thanks to the size of the bumps on the same roads, this is a condition you're always capable of achieving.

The traditional, unspoken belief was that if you could manage 45 or 50 on the main routes and 35 or 40 in built-up areas, well, you were observing the speed limit, on average. But EU-financed improvements mean many roads are now so straight and smooth that, even at 60 miles an hour, you wouldn't know you were moving, except for all the speed cameras flashing by in your side-view.

Hence the upsurge in police activity aimed at getting us to take the speed limits literally. And the camera campaign in particular seems to be having an effect. Driving north at the weekend, I was struck by how many cars (including mine!) were doing a maximum 59.5 miles an hour even on stretches of road where, in the past, if you weren't breaking the speed limit other drivers regarded you either as a nuisance or a visitor from the Continent.

IF the move to enforce speed limits is as successful as the efforts to enforce parking laws have been, it will do well. A decade ago, parking was a relative free-for-all and, for example, only people with specialist knowledge understood exactly what a single yellow line meant. But in the space of a few short years, Dubliners have become used to a situation in which parking is so strictly policed by clampers and towers that one guy I know finds himself panicking at least once a day as he tries to recall where he parked or when he last fed the meter, before he remembers that he doesn't have a car.

But now that we are being urged to take the traffic laws at face value, it may be time to deal with another anachronism. Yes, I mean of course our famously humorous dual road-sign system, under which distances are given in kilometres while the speed limits are - hee, hee! - in miles.

I know we only put up the kilometre signs because the Europeans had paid for many of the roads anyway and it seemed the polite thing to do. And I know also that the dual system has a quintessentially Irish charm, in the same way that the complete absence of signs in some parts of the country has always been such a source of joy for visitors. God knows, it's one of the few things left that makes a visit to Ireland that bit "different", as Bord Failte would say.

I always thought it would be an even bigger tourist draw if we introduced optional right-side-of-the-road driving for tourists. But this is an age of rationalisation, and I think the time has come instead for the mile-kilometre dichotomy to go the way of the other much-loved example of Irish dualism, the nod-and-wink system. Which among other things allowed us for so long to observe the speed limits with one eye only, while keeping the other one peeled for the cops.

Frank McNally can be contacted at fmcnally@irish-times.ie