Colm O'Regan: 'I fantasise about throwing something at their car as they pass'

This week, 21 years ago, on a sweltering hot evening I got off a train in New Orleans. It was the end of the first leg of a train trip around the States after my J1 visa summer in New York. The youth hostel I was staying at was on Carondelet Street. Outside the station, I got into a taxi.

“Carrindellitt Street” I said to the driver. In my weird J1 accent that I can only describe as New Cork. He was puzzled.

“Oh you mean Car-awwnn-du-laayy.” He just let the word come out at its own natural pace. And once he knew the place we drove off. Except we didn’t drive. We glided along the road at about 20mph in his enormous flat barge of car. (I don’t know much about cars but I think it was a 1964… American Car.) It was a contrast from New York where I was all gotta-getta-subway-walk-three-avenues-up-four-streets-down. At the start I was impatient. Soon, I just allowed the New Orleans pace to take over.

I was thinking about that last week because Dublin City Council voted to delay a plan to bring in the 30kmh limit across much of the city.

Our road is already 30km per hour. But many don’t drive at it. And it’s definitely never enforced. Some drive so fast that I fantasise about throwing something at their car as they pass but there are laws against that that are enforced. The rest of our cities are mainly 50-zones. But a lot don’t keep to that either. You can hear motorcycles that make such a noise that must be speeding unless they’re actually lawnmowers.

A lot of argument against 30 is that it’s just impractical on the bigger roads. So I drove at 30kmh for a while. It IS hard at the start. 30 on an empty road feels unnatural. Like there’s something wrong with the car. Or something wrong with you. Like you’re the Sunday driver years of prejudice warned you about. Like people are going to pass you and glare in the window at you and assume you’re 92 and driving your older siblings to visit a grave.

But after a while, I did relax. I just glided. With traffic lights, I didn’t seem to making much less progress than a car in front of me that regularly hared away. And coming up to lights, I just ambled into them, needing to brake less. And honestly, I felt in control.

Except when I had to speed up when others were ‘up my hole’ because I felt embarrassed.

Now the sample size of my survey is vanishingly small. I wasn’t in a hurry. My livelihood didn’t depend on speed. There are a huge amount of people tearing around the streets who feel forced to travel fast. Some because they are mad hoors but most others do so because our whole economic model depends on them flooring it. Like the bogus self-employed couriers with no rights for example who have to cram as many jobs into the day as possible. Or taxi drivers crippled with soaring costs. And it’s partly our fault because we demand next-day delivery of our books on mindfulness.

So to get to 30, our expectations as consumers need to change too. And those bringing in the law might do some sums and explaining that as well as the little matter of saving lives, you won’t actually be that delayed. You’ll burn less fuel revving and braking and one day when the Dark Gods have been defeated, insurance costs will come down.

Anyway, while waiting for councillors, if you’re not in a rush and in the city, and there’s no one up your hole, try the 30.