A beloved former neighbor, the kind of frontiersman who performed his own tree surgery with ladders and ropes, wired his own circuits, repaired his own plumbing, and offered plenty of wanted and unwanted advice about attic insulation, once came to a Town Meeting about “traffic calming.” When the discussion opened, he stood and declared that the speed bumps in our neighborhood were insufficient deterrents. They were too gentle, he said. A good speed bump has to punish the car that races over it. A good speed bump needs a vicious temper. As an engineer, he had further thoughts about the specifics of its construction, but was not allowed to elaborate. Not everyone in town wanted advice.
I can’t guarantee the accuracy of whatever calculations he planned to share, but I agree with his point. Speed bumps can feel like soft hiccups, and some speed bumps are less traffic-calming threats than traffic-calming ironies. In other words, speed bumps are sped over. I shamefacedly submit some of my own behavior as proof, even though I would prefer to do so anonymously, because speeding is nothing to be proud of.
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When my daughter was in high school, her physics class stood outside with stopwatches, clocking speeds on Concord Avenue for a graphing exercise. The freedom from being indoors exhilarated them, and no one minded that homework was involved. There are no speed bumps on Concord Avenue, of course, but if they had graphed rates along School Street, they would have come up with some alarming results. We drive awfully fast around this small town.
And so, it caught my eye when, driving home through Watertown and Belmont a while ago, I saw one of those police-generated, temporary electronic warning signs next to a speed bump. On the Mass Pike, these messages usually rhyme: Click it or Ticket. This one began in the usual straightforward, unpoetic way: “Fine for speeding.”
Then I saw the number:
“$205.”
If I was going too fast as I drove past (which is likely), I immediately slowed down. The bump did not deter me. It was the thought-provoking, highly specific amount. That extra $5 made an emphatic and unignorable point. It was personal. ‘You may be racing over the usual hiccup bump,’ it said (I heard this in my head in the resonant tones of a sportscaster), ‘but this is the fine we have assigned for YOU. We have looked into your finances—everything down to the penny, there are no secrets left–and we’ve added the extra five dollars because those extra five dollars are going to hurt. We recommend you slow down, or else.’
I did, and I have.
This is not a story where all that is right and good triumphs, and everyone in the kingdom drives at perfect speed ever after. It is a story about what a sign to the left of ordinary can do to cause a little reflection, a little shock, a little change. Slow down. That number waits for you.
Elissa Ely writes about seniors/baby boomers for The Belmont Voice. She is a community psychiatrist.
