Simon Heffer
Mail Online
December 27, 2011
Zealots
It is quite right for the state to prosecute motorists who drive at 40mph in 30mph limits on housing estates where children might be playing, and near schools, but it even more zealously prosecutes those who drive past speed cameras in 70mph zones in open country at 80mph and are doing no harm at all.
This is a two-pronged problem. It is partly the fault of the civil servants who draw up laws, and who (unlike in previous generations) are insufficiently well-educated, and apolitical, to ensure their measures have no unintended consequences.
But it is also the fault of the police who implement the law without discretion or, often, much good sense, when they would be better employed directing their firepower at those who justly deserve it, and against whom society cries out to be protected.
A fine example of this was in Kent a few years ago, where two young policemen pulled over an 82-year-old man for driving slowly in the small hours of Christmas morning…
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