I came upon a 20mph speed trap in NV last week whilst walking the dog.
One policeman, one special constable and a council worker holding a speed gun.
Now I'm all for stopping speed-demons in suburban residential streets but something was very odd about this trap.
They were positioned on a crossroad of a well-known "rat-run" where local traffic avoids the main-road jams to get onto Trinity Road BUT the road they were targeting has the highest speed-bump (and the nearest to the speed gun) that I know of in Wandsworth. It is so high that drivers who know it crawl over it at no more than 10mph and drivers who don't soon bash their cars underneath with a loud crunch. The scrapes and gouges of the tarmac stand as a testimony as to how savage it is.
I asked one of the team why they had picked that road - "in response to resident's complaints about speeding" was all they would say.
I was flummoxed as I have know these two roads for decades and not only is the speed bump they chose the highest but both roads have bumps much higher than average that keep the traffic down to below 15mph at the very most.
So I wondered why they bothered to police the 20mph limit at that particular spot - there wasn't a snowball in hell's chance of catching anyone over the limit.
Did they
A) Do it to appease local residents whose real issue is the morning rat-run past their door but who feel they will get more sympathy if they invent a "speeding" problem?
or
B) Do the Police do it to show the public they are "cracking down" on 20mph speeders - but in reality don't want the hassle of catching them and would rather warn them off rather than catch them.
I ask this because there are plenty of roads I could point them towards where they could catch every other car exceeding 20mph if they wanted to...
I'm confused!