Les Bonnes Choses

I finally was able to pay a speeding ticket that I had gotten back at the beginning of the year. I was driving with Amy back to Chicago from London via the Bluewater Bridge, and was approaching Sarnia. Anyone who has traveled highway 402 into Sarnia knows about the point where the highway inexplicably changes from a 100 to a 80 and then a 70 km/h highway. There's nothing built up along the highway -- no strip malls, no traffic lights, just the same rural landscape you find along the road all the way from London. I had been describing the rules for a new game I had gotten for Christmas, and thus hadn't noticed the sign posting a lower speed limit. And because there are no other cues that the speed limit might be lower, I sped right into a radar trap. I will say that the OPP officer was nice about the whole thing, and knocked down the fine from 35 over to 15 over (115 in a 100), so I wasn't about to complain. And in fact, had he set up the trap just 100 meters down the road where the speed limit was 70 km/h, and had I been going 5 km/h faster, that would have been grounds for an immediate vehicle seizure.

I'm ambivalent about the whole situation. On one hand, the apparent disconnect between the speed limit and the terrain is annoying, especially because I'm $56 poorer for it. On the other hand, it's an absolutely brilliant way to generate revenue. Think of how much money the government could make at car auctions if the speed limit along the highway 401 corridor dropped to 60 in a few randomly selected locations.