Cold Busted

In these harsh economic times, one cannot be too careful...and this is why I am so annoyed with myself for getting not one, but two speeding tickets along the same stretch of parkway. To go along with this, after the tickets arrived in the mail, I saw this newspaper headline, "Speed cameras bust taxpayers." What they meant was that not only will we be paying for speeding, we'll also be paying more for the costs of personnel to monitor and calibrate the speed cameras.

Really, I need to slow down, it seems. I looked at the dates and could not recall just where I was going. Since I have not raced to put out any fires or been a part of any other emergency operations in the recent past, I can conclude that there was no reason for me to be speeding.

When I talk to a friend about this, she pointed out something that got to my inner conspiracy theorist--it is interesting to see just where they put these cameras...often in places where you'd be expected to speed up a little, not in necessarily wealthy neighborhoods, and not where anyone is in any real danger. That parkway isn't a pedestrian walkway, it curvy so you naturally can't go ridiculously fast and it is not like you are going to roll over into a ditch because there are none.

Since I am slowing down (and it felt like I was crawling along the parkway), I've actually noticed the signs. The speed as I return home is 10 mph higher than the one I must abide by leaving home. Both times I was caught, I was going away from home. Had I been driving that same speed on the way back, there might have been no tickets...*sigh*