Our Wanker this Week is Sunday Times columnist Matt Rudd, who last Sunday published what we think is the most crass, ill-informed article we have ever read. It stated his position in the “debate” about speed cameras – we put the word in inverted commas because there really is no debate; it's just Matt “Elmer” Fudd and a few self-seeking campaigners like the totty from “Brake” versus all the rest of us sensible people ...
"As you read this, I will be driving to Wales" (Good. When you get there, why not just keep driving? – GOS). "It doesn't matter what time you're reading this, morning, noon or night, any day this week, because I will be driving to Wales for pretty much all of it. No, I don't own a caravan. I will simply be sticking to the speed limit."
Now, Elmer, you call it “the” speed limit. Which speed limit do you mean? The entirely sensible national speed limit that was invented by the government on advice from people like the police, the Road Traffic Laboratory and others who knew what they were talking about, or those silly, inappropriate speed limits put in place by amateurish local authorities anxious to be seen doing something about road safety without spending any money? - GOS
"This is partly because there's obviously no point rushing to get to Wales. Not in this weather."(Cheap joke, Elmer. People who are going to Wales because they live there might disagree with you – GOS) "But it is also because I've reached an age where I find speeding intensely irritating. Almost as intensely irritating as the speeders stuck in my trundling wake will be finding me, right about now, as you read this" (then why not do what the drivers of tractors and other slow-moving vehicles do, and pop into a lay-by for a few minutes so people can pass? It's called good manners, Elmer. But I suppose that wouldn't suit you, would it, because you think you have a God-given right to dictate to other people how fast they should drive – GOS).
"I see them in my mirror, puce and pot-bellied, incensed that I would dare to block their path by driving, well, normally. This is their road. And as sure as Jeremy Clarkson should be PM, they should be allowed to drive at whatever speed they damned well like. The size of their manhood depends on it."
Factually incorrect, Elmer. I'm one of these people and I am neither puce nor pot-bellied. And speaking of the size of our manhood, what does this say about yours? Is your own penis-image the reason you so dislike being overtaken? Is your dick really tiny, so that you don't want anyone else to have a bigger one? - GOS
"There is one thing these men, in their squitty Beemers with their suit bags hanging in the back, hate more than me, and that's speed cameras. Boy, do they hate speed cameras. A few spend their evenings fire-bombing the Gatsos, which must, at least, be momentarily satisfying" (almost as satisfying as using a completely unnecessary number of commas, you bloody amateur – GOS). "More worryingly, some devote huge amounts of time to setting up associations to get rid of them" (oh, so it's OK when people like Brake form associations to strangle movement on our roads and demonise ordinary motorists, but it's not OK for anyone to organise in opposition? Funny old democracy you live in, Elmer – GOS).
"Last week Brian Gregory, chairman of the official-sounding but essentially mad Association of British Drivers (ABD), even went so far as to criticise a road safety campaigner whose son had died in a car crash. Clare Brixey has been leading a protest against cuts to Wiltshire's speed-camera partnership. Gregory takes exception to this because her son, Ashley, died in a car driven by someone who had been drinking and taking drugs (oh, and doing twice the speed limit)."
That's very sad, Elmer. You don't explain how a speed camera would have (a) detected the drink and the drugs and (b) stopped the errant driver in his tracks. You're confusing the real issue of dangerous driving with the very childish and naïve idea that if everyone drove really slowly there'd be no more drunken drivers and no more deaths on the road. You can kill someone just as thoroughly at 50mph as you can at 90mph. The point is not to avoid speed which according to official figures is a contributory factor in only 7.3% of road casualties, but to avoid accidents. That takes brains, Elmer, not self-righteous posturing - GOS
"She's off-issue, Brian Gregory reckons. “It would be more logical for her to campaign for diminishing radius bends to be re-engineered or against swimming-pools built next to roads”, he said wittily (the car had ended up on its roof in a swimming pool)."
No, Elmer, he wasn't being witty. He was being entirely serious and rather intelligent. Diminishing radius bends are a frequent cause of accidents at all speeds, and as the Road Safety Foundation and EuroRap recently pointed out, 50% of British accidents happen on only 10% of our roads, and re-engineering dangerous roads so they don't invite drivers to make mistakes would be a real contribution to road safety. And swimming pools beside roads? It doesn't take a degree in astro-physics to tell that if a road is dangerous, it makes sense to give cars something suitable to crash into – otherwise why does every motorway in the country have a crash barrier down the middle?
And while we're at it, Elmer, can we point out (as you evidently haven't bothered to do any research for this article) that the ABD is not mad at all, but a serious and completely responsible association dedicated to better, and safer, motoring on British roads. You see, Elmer, hard as you may find it to accept, there are other ways of making roads safer besides making them slower, and the vast majority of motorists are ordinary, law-abiding, sensible people. How else could 33 million drivers produce less than 3,000 deaths a year? Every one of those deaths is a tragedy but that doesn't negate the fact that it is a staggeringly low figure given the density of traffic on British roads.
We really can't be arsed to quote much more of this specious twaddle. Just one more bit ...
"Speeding is horrible. Road accidents happen because of idiots" (we wondered how long it would be before this word cropped up – GOS) "who thought they had the skills of an F1 driver – and then find, as they hurtle towards a lamp-post or a bus or a pavement full of pedestrians – that they didn't."
Wrong again, Elmer. Where the hell have you been and what the hell have you been doing all these years, that you haven't yet realised the truth about something most of us do every day? Even the government have now stopped using the slogan “Speed kills!” because they know it doesn't.
Accidents kill. Mistakes kill. Bad roads kill. Drink and drugs kill. Almost all drivers know very well how fast they can safely travel in a given situation. They can sum up the state of the traffic, the weather, the condition of the road surface and the behaviour of other motorists and act accordingly. Surveys in Canada have revealed that drivers travelling 10kph below the speed limit are twice as likely to be involved in an accident as those travelling 10kph over. Official police figures show that far more accidents are caused by driver inattention than by excessive speed, and one of the most obvious causes of driver inattention must be the need to watch your speedometer instead of the road ahead, because some plonker has put a yellow box on a pole.
So, Elmer, for adopting self-righteous knee-jerk postures and going for cheap laughs at the expense of accuracy and reason, you are our Wanker of the Week.
Just two more things. Firstly, you're not very consistent, are you? Back in 2008 you wrote a rather silly article about how you were trying to get the best economy from your car. You seemed quite proud of the discovery that your car used less petrol if you freewheeled down the hills. You wrote ”If a nice, long, freeloader hill has a sharp corner halfway down it, I tell my family to hold on – there’s no way I’m going to lose momentum just because we might skid into a tree. As I point out to my wife, braking costs fuel. She points out to me, not braking costs lives. Like, whatever ...”
Wow, that's really responsible driving, well done. If one of those lamp posts or a bus or a pavement full of pedestrians had appeared round the sharp corner ... well, you'd have been an idiot, wouldn't you? Not very fair on your wife, who sounds like a sensible woman (apart from having married you, that is).
And secondly, how was your trip to Wales? We do hope it rained.
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