I’ve never been a particularly fast driver. I can’t have been, because in four decades at the wheel, driving far too many miles every year, I’ve only been nicked three times for speeding. Once was in 1985 doing 65mph in a 40mph limit on the A456 just outside Halesowen. I was in my dad’s car, wearing mirrored sunglasses, which I decided not to remove when the police officer addressed me. Idiot. (Me, not the copper.) Perhaps he saw his own irritated reflection as he issued the reprimand. I got a fine no bigger than the speed I was doing, and three richly deserved points. It should have been more.
The second time was more recently, on the Adriatic coast road in Croatia. An outstretched arm, palm facing towards me, indicated I should stop. On this occasion I removed my sunglasses; the policajac didn’t. After a brief admonishment and a spot of form-filling, his arm was outstretched again – now with his palm facing upwards, indicating I should put some cash in it. This I did. Job done.
Then, early this year, before 7am on a Sunday morning, I was nicked on an urban dual carriageway for doing 35 in a 30. Harsh, but rules are rules. A speed awareness course was offered. I’d had mixed reports of these things, ranging from “quite interesting, actually” to “boring” to “I’ll just take the points next time”. If and when I’m asked for my view, one word will do: revelatory. It wasn’t so much what we were directly taught, though this was interesting enough – such as how driving too fast for hours will get you there mere minutes quicker. It was more that it made me appreciate the kind of driver I’d been over the roughly half a million miles I’ve driven in my life.
While I’d never driven crazily quickly, I now saw how I was always rushing, rushing, rushing. Pushing, pushing, pushing the speed limits. Driving, you know, just that little bit over the limit that someone’s said you can get away with. And going by the invariably lower speed reading you get on your GPS rather than the one the car is telling you. Perhaps most ludicrously of all, trying to beat the arrival time your satnav is estimating.
Not any more, officer, I swear. Be it a 60, a 40, a 30 or a 20 limit, I go no faster. In a 20mph zone this causes significant fury in those driving behind me, but so be it.
On the motorway, committing to a steady 70mph has genuinely been a revelation. So much less stressful. No rushing, no pushing, just enjoying the ride. And, serving as constant cringeworthy reminders of the driver I used to be, versions of my old self roar past, at 77mph, 80mph or much more, their jaws clenched, knuckles white and fingerprints surely visible on their tightly gripped steering wheels. Anxiously, angrily, they scan the road ahead to see who dares impede their speed, and check their mirrors to see who might threaten to pass them. And all the time their eyes dart everywhere, looking for the cops who might rein in their terror.
When I was learning to drive, my instructor, encouraging me to smooth my braking, accelerating and gear-changing, told me to imagine I had a bucket of water or my mother-in-law on the back seat. The latter seemed an odd reference point for a 17-year-old but I knew what he was getting at. And this week, with my mother-in-law on board on an open road between Ripon and Kirkby Malzeard, motoring at well below the 60mph limit, the newly mindful driver I have become looked in the mirror to see a line of cars stretching behind us. I might drive a little more slowly than I used to – but I’m not quite ready to be that man, so I must admit I gently stepped on it a bit. And my mother-in-law didn’t flinch at all.
• Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian columnist
