Speeding. We all do it, but are you doing it way more than you even realize? If you’re anything like me, you probably are. I don’t just mean are you driving well above the posted limit on a fast, empty motorway, in the way many of us do. I’m talking about far less egregious transgressions, ones we think are so inconsequential that we almost don’t don’t even consider them illegal.
You might only be traveling a couple of mph or km/h over the posted limit, but you might be doing it on almost every single road when there’s no other traffic ahead of you to force you to regulate your speed. I’ve just had my lawbreaking ways highlighted and it got me wondering: could I go through an entire day without speeding?
This post was inspired by me swapping the Mazda CX-60 PHEV I’ve been driving for the past year or so for a Lexus RX450h. The Lexus is on a different planet for refinement, but straight away I noticed something shattering the calm. It was a beep that sounded every time I drove over the speed limit. Not a particularly shrill beep, but still a beep. Still annoying. I made a mental note to dig through the menus and work out how to turn the damn thing off as soon as I got home.
Related: Why A Finnish Driver Was Fined $130,000 After Being Caught Speeding 20 MPH Over Limit
But I forgot, and so it was there again hassling me the next day. I thought again about looking for the off switch, but then another thought struck me. Could I get through an entire journey – heck, an entire day – without letting the beep sound? That is what it’s there for, after all.
The answer so far is no, I can’t. I’ve realized that my default is to automatically drive slightly above the limit almost everywhere and it’s proving hard to kick that habit. The RX‘s speed beep shows no mercy, calling you out for straying even just 1 mph (0.6 km/h) over the legal maximum so it’s been fairly vocal so far. But I’m determined to keep it quiet on at least one journey before I make a call on whether to switch it off, which I strongly suspect I will.
Do you think you could last an entire day without breaking a speed limit? Maybe give it a try, just for a day or so, and let us know how you get on. It might make you look at the way you drive in a whole new – and slower, less exciting, but undoubtedly safer – light.
