10 reasons why you should keep to the speed limit

Recently, I had opportunity to explore the merits of slow driving [this is, for the uninitiated, keeping religiously to the urban speed limit of 50 kph], which I found to be, including but not limited to:

1. Time to take a nap on your way to your destination.
I cannot name the number of times I have fallen asleep at the wheel, from boredom and long periods of inactivity as results from the low speeds. Good for catching up with lost sleep from when you slept at 4 am instead of your usual 9 pm bedtime. And surprisingly this was done without injury or loss of life or limb, or in any case bits of the car being knocked off!

2. Mapping pothole locations, depth, girth and severity of approach and departure angles.
When you are driving at this speed, you do have the time to visit, quite slowly all the resident potholes and acquaint yourself quite intimately with their various multifarious properties, sufficient to put a seasoned geologist quite ill at ease. I was, in the few weeks I drove at this non-breakneck speed quite familiar with their rate of expansion too. I still prefer not to enter their dark recesses by floating by cushioned by the warm cocoon of pure unadulterated speed.

3. Meeting and shaking hands or at least showing the middle finger to your fellow drivers.
The business of not applying your right foot, booted, shoed, sandaled, slippered, etc, to the accelerator pedal is frowned upon mightily by other road users, the likes of me before the encounter with speed of postal mail on the highways. This causes willy nilly overtaking of “offender” at most times causing near misses of critical parts of motor vehicles, the ones overtaking and the ones being overtaken, more often than not on encountering an oncoming vehicle there is a tendency of them promptly forgetting that they were overtaking you and return to the lane you occupy so rapidly that you end up engaging a lamp post or ten in a game of chicken. Woe unto you if there are pedestrians on the pavement you intend to patronize.

4. Flora and fauna.
Abuse, insults, water previously resident on the road surface shall have new tenancy on your person, even pedestrians do walk up to you and insult you just for the heck of it! There is a positive side to this. Really. You can see how many new buildings have come up, count the floors, notice that your company may have moved premises and since you had been too preoccupied with keeping your car on the road previously, you do manage to get lost if you stare too long at that maiden with a none too modest history, then you turn to look at her preview you dive right into the next large pothole and get stuck fast leaving passers by wondering who was careless enough to leave the roof of a car and an aerial lying carelessly about the road. You also do happen to notice how old your car is mainly from the number plates and the odd creaks and groans you hear as you navigate the potholed road surface, cheered on by the exclamations of “toa hio mkebe kwa barabara, jangili!” [remove that tin can from the road, idiot!]

5. Wear and tear.
No wear and tear on car and tyres, but I am still unconvinced by the fuel efficiency of slow driving since you actually use more fuel as public transport vehicles overtake you and force you to overtake them again when they get to the next bus stop. While all this is going on, well, amidst them trying to chip off bits of your car bumpers and corner lights since they notice you are driving timidly, split between that and suspension bits unused shall just rust and fall off the car. Brakes and tyres shall join the mass exodus in protest of little to no use. Do not be surprised one morning to find your windshields have walked off with your side mirrors and headlamps in a mass action instigated by the shame they have to endure as part of your miserable trips while you attend to some of your errands.

6. Cleaning up.
You can tidy up and even wash the innards of the car. I did indeed one day have the rubber mats and carpets laundered and splayed on the various flat surfaces of the car, the roof and bonnet work really well, hang the duster to dry on the car aerial since you are not going fast enough to cause them to flutter away, unfortunately they were all pinched at the Bunyala Road junction, I forgot that they are quite the hot item since the vendors also sell them to motorists at the same location. No worries, I bought them back the following day at a very reasonable rate, the duster was thrown in as a discount item.

7. Shopping.
You can window shop without actually getting out of the car and walking to the store window. All you need to do is turn your head, notebook in hand and take down prices and shops are you drive along without missing a bit. Buying the morning paper from the vendor down the street stops being a hit or miss affair, you hitting the poor sod with the 40 shilling coin right on his forehead and him missing your car window as he tosses the newspaper right into the car in the lane next to yours as you speed by. I have had more approaches by vendors offering to sell me anything from vegetables to sunglasses, in the middle of the night mind you, they do tend to hop sharpish into the bushes in the island if you approach at breakneck speed.

8. Catching up on reading.
You can read your book, I recommend something of at least five hundred pages, and it should be funny to avoid number 1 which I understand might lead to death or worse, loss of limbs. The daily newspaper is of paramount importance too, and according to number 7 it is now within reasonable reach. Finally you need to install that DVD thingy and watch semi naked women dance as you make the drive, accompanied by a suitably loud thumping sound system, also very important if you need to distract fist waving pedestrians and angry drivers who have been hanging onto your boot for the last ten kilometres.

9. Conversation.
You can actually hold a conversation with the occupants of the motor vehicle you are commanding since you are not quite preoccupied with keeping the car within your own lane and from careening inelegantly into the one in front of you when they suddenly decide to test their antilock braking system. You can also, almost safely hold a telephone conversation without a hands free kit, chat on yahoo too, [which I do not recommend since the policeman can catch up to you while on foot] though at the moment I am still at the point of asking why in heck would I want to do the same?

10. Take away meals.
Best of all you can finish your supper as you drive on home, throw wrapper out the window before you get there saving you the trouble of washing up or garbage disposal. All this and also avoid the nasty meal that the wife may have put together for you, which now you can nibble at and call for your towel as you make swift headway for the shower. As an aphrodisiac snack, you can buy a few packets of those roasted peanuts that the young girls sell at the lights to ensure a most robust performance of curtain box beholding proportions to appease wife who may have been offended by you nibbling instead of wolfing down a meal she slaved over on the hot gas cooker for an hour.

Do watch me decimate the roads at breakneck speed, mind, I find the slower option makes me an immediate and pressing danger such I shall remedy by resuming previous speeds which I shall have to learn as would my lovely car as we proved this morning she seems to have had a problem readjusting since I could catch a distinctly heady whiff of melting brake pads and burning rubber when I was turning into my parking slot, which blossomed into a smoking fest as soon as I came to a screeching halt. Do drive briskly but safely now, keep our roads moving swiftly.