At the speed awareness course run by AA DriveTech somewhere in the arse-end of the Angel, I run into Stephen Bayley, the design guru. Bayley is the author of (among many other works) Sex, Drink and Fast Cars, a copy of which he rather opportunistically has in the Gladstone bag he’s lugging along at the end of his cream-linen clad arm. A quick exchange establishes that he, like me, was nabbed by the speed cameras on Tower Bridge doing 27 miles per hour. Our admission calls forth from our fellow course participants, who are sitting on plastic stacking chairs waiting to undergo the “registration process”, that they – old, young, black, white, brown, male, female, gay and straight – are all guilty of exactly the same offence.
It’s a very modern moment, this: an application of technology to the turbid urban mill race has resulted in the diversion into this quiet, carpet-tiled pool of an odd group of fish, united only by this fact – that on such and such a date, we were all travelling at the same velocity in the same place. And yet . . . and yet, the recognition of this piffling common characteristic is sufficient, or so I like to think, to unite us as a group. As Gary (not his real name) from DriveTech checks our IDs and fingers our details into his handheld device, our solidarity grows; we swell into this new identity, until – seated in trios at melamine-topped desks, confronting our instructor – we have become the “Tower Bridge 22”, a fearless gang of desperados whose only wish was that the drawbridges had actually been raised as we speeded towards them, so that our cars would have been launched howling into inner space!
Our instructor, Peter (not his real name, either – indeed, I don’t believe he has one), sets out a few house rules, including the need for us to maintain confidentiality. So I suppose I shouldn’t be writing about this course, let alone telling you that Stephen was there. Still, I like to tempt fate: I’m the Edward Snowden of the TB22, fearlessly exposing DriveTech’s sinister secrets, and when the City of London police come knocking, I’ll go on the run, holing up at South Mimms services until I’m offered asylum . . . by Burger King.
Up until now, I’ve been struggling to fit in with the rest of the TB22. I want to be a good group member. Besides, unlike Stephen – who vigorously contends that he never speeds and that the 20-miles-per-hour limit, as well as being inadequately advertised on the approach to the bridge, is imposed on baseless grounds cooked up by English Heritage regarding its not-so-superstructure – I know I need help. It may surprise regular readers of this column, who have read me over the years animadverting on the follies of all aspects of the vehicular, to learn that I am a chronic speedhead. True, I don’t own a car any more but put my hands on the hireling wheel – as they were on the night of the 17th inst – and my foot slams straight to the floor. So . . . I am reaching out – while Stephen tenses up.
Over the next three hours, with only a 15-minute break for coffee, Peter leads us through the dos and do-nots of velocity. The course is a mixture of the informational (basically, a refresher on the Highway Code) and the emotional: lots of statistics about fatalities and how an extra ten miles an hour will turn you into the Angel of Death, slaughtering all suburban firstborn. I am, as I say, willing to be healed and so I participate enthusiastically. So does Stephen. Unfortunately, we take part perhaps a little too enthusiastically: I’m not sure Peter gets that many attendees who wish to discuss in detail the traffic management theories of Hans Monderman, or the impacts of high- and low-frequency vibrations on bascule bridges, let alone the neoliberal underpinning to his argument that the government needs us to be able to drive so that we can join in that collective desideratum, “growth”.
By the end of the course, when we’re using our hand-held devices to “vote” not only on multiple-choice questions but also on how we feel Peter has done, I’m feeling considerable solidarity with my fellow speeders. But then, as we are encouraged to put what we’ve learned to the test by answering questions in response to Peter’s laser pointer hovering over an image of the approaches to the dreaded bridge, it becomes painfully clear that I am a man alone. It is Stephen who personifies the group’s Geist, for almost every member of the TB22 is still carping bitterly about how they were nicked at all. Loonies.
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