Speedophile

A speedophile is one attracted or addicted to going fast.

Ah, that word. It sounds like a deliberate attempt to make ordinary "law-abiding" folk sound like some kind of child molesting monster, doesn't it? Well, there is a grain of truth in that: many more children are killed on the roads every year than by child molesters, and of course almost all child abuse is perpetrated by someone known to the child, so the dangerous stranger really is the one in the car rat-running past the playground, but that's not what's behind the use of this word.

A speedophile is a particular type of driver. The speedophile loves speed, just as the bibliophile loves books; do we complain that bibliophiles are child molesters? Or paediatricians? Or podiatrists? Well, maybe...

Who, me?
I am a speedophile. I love going fast. One may choose not exceed the speed limits, but like an alcoholic who is not drinking, the temptation is always there when I see an open road. I have a 193bhp turbocharged car. But I'm not going to play that game: if I want to go fast I ride my bike down a steep hill instead. All of the rush, and nobody endangered but me.

Many speedophiles oppose speed enforcement on libertarian grounds, although they are rarely open about this, preferring to use weak arguments about speed in some way not being related to safety on the roads, generally requiring misuse of statistics. In the end, the laws of physics are pretty hard to escape. The faster you go the less time you have to react, the more energy you have to dissipate in order to stop. There have been calls to limit car speeds through engine management, and these have been opposed because such equipment might prevent a driver "accelerating out of trouble" - although of course it is far more likely that they will accelerate into trouble.

So, a speedophile is not an ordinary driver who occasionally exceeds the limit, they are someone who actively wants to drive fast. The worst kind of speedophile is so obsessed by speed that Mr Sense has left the building. They are in the grip of the "speed imperative" - if a car is going slower than they want to, then they must overtake - if it's not safe then the slower driver has somehow "forced" them to do something dangerous. These are presumably the people who blow up speed cameras and ensure that multiply-convicted speeders have a higher than average crash rate, mileage adjusted.

Speedophiles often argue against speed enforcement. They paint themselves as law-abiding drivers wronged by the system, though of course there is no such thing as a law-abiding speeder - how can there be? Speeding is an offence. A speedophile refuses to accept constraints on speed other than their own judgement, despite the well-documented fact that most drivers overestimate their own skill; the speedophile considers himself (and they are mostly men) to be an elite driver. One speedophile who was anxious to demonstrate the superior roadholding of his rear-wheel-drive car recently killed two young girls. The public roads are not exclusively inhabited by people protected by steel cages - or perhaps one of the 15% of drivers who are below average skill (85% of drivers think they are above average) might do something unexpected.

Above all the speedophile refuses to consider obeying the law as a "solution" to the "problem" of speed enforcement. Paul Smith, then, is a speedophile. He exerts considerable energy trying to persuade people that the exponential decay in the drop in traffic fatalities visible since the 1970s is evidence that speed cameras are now responsible for a third of road deaths. Some details of his "logic" are here. Strangely, none of the speedophiles I've met seem to argue against the existence of limits, possibly because they know that the Autobahns, with their unlimited sections, have twice the fatality rate of our motorways despite the acknowledged fact that German drivers are generally better trained and more disciplined. They just don't think the limit should be enforced. Or at least not in their case.

Are you a speedophile? Only you can tell. I have yet to come across a campaigner against speed cameras who is not; most members of the Association of British Drivers I have encountered do a very good job of pretending to be speedophiles; Jeremy Clarkson is surely one.

If you like to drive fast, I urge you to try a track day at a racetrack. Here you can find out what it's really like, probably without killing anyone in the process.

Of course, obeying the speed limit is also fraught with dreadful problems. What to do with the petrol money you save, what to do with the money you save on tyres, what to do with the money you save on fines - all problems for the non-speedophile. One thing, though - driving is much less stressful when you don't treat every journey as a competition.