ABU                   Speed humps                        (Sat 2 October 2005)

Yesterday' s Daily Telegraph's motoring editor (Honest John) has confirmed what a lot of people believed in their heart despite officiate denials.  Speed bumps do damage cars.  It is true that the damage is not as severe as a little MG encountered in the early day in Richmond.  That incident tore the exhaust pipe off the bottom of the car when it was driven at a moderate pace a number of years ago.  I understand that the local council paid up without a court case.  But current damage to vehicles is slower to manifest itself to the owner of the vehicle.  Honest John suggests that it is better to put one pair of wheels across the cushion (what an outrageous name to give a hump in the road, but the term "speed cushion" seems to be the accepted one for these outrages).  He says that it is not as comfortable as spanning the "cushion" with the pair of wheels, but that method of driving scours the edges of the tyres.

So you take your choice, buy new tyres more often than you should need to, or have your suspension components replace more often than should happen on a reasonable road surface.

It will come, but I don't know when, that a motorist sues a Council for damage to his vehicle.  But I expect what will happen is that the Council will stall until the very last moment and then settle out of Court.  This is one of the flaws in the British legal system where a guilty party can avoid a Court Ruling that will effectively force it to change its behaviour on future occasions.

Even when a Council is eventually sued, their defence will probably be that the 'advantages' of speed humps outweigh the additional wear-and-tear on the vehicles.  It will then be down to the judge to rule one way or the other.  So you will almost certainly have to suffer the torture that the Council inflict upon you.

It is my understanding that a lot of humps were installed as part of a central government initiative, and that the general taxpayer coughed up the money for the humps.  Now Councils work on the rule that: if we are offered money and we don't spend it, Whitehall will not offer us any more even though we don't want to do what Whitehall wants.

But if you say to a government minister that your local council is doing naughty things, they wash their hands of the outcome and avoid mentioning that central government has set the rules so as to inveigle Councils to do its bidding.  There are some planning laws that follow that ruse.  And the poor old Council is blamed for the skulduggery of central government.