Not content with whizzing down our motorways at 70mph, there’s now a proposal to up this by another 10 miles by the year 2013. Increasing speed in a society that’s already hurried? Insane idea.
Although the government claim this change will be immensely ‘time-saving’ and of huge convenience to motorists on the road today, may I first of all state the obvious. The faster you drive, the lower your chances are of actually surviving an accident. Speed kills. Everybody knows that.
And then how about we consider what this proposal really signifies. I find it extremely unsettling to see how as a society we appear to demand everything be quick, powerful and impressive. Not content with what we have, we constantly seek the next best thing and this is evident from the early creations of convenience food to the modern waiting-for-the-next- smartphone-release obsession.
As we constantly push to see what else we can ‘improve’ on and what new ground we can break, we have given birth to the ‘can’t sit still’ 21st century syndrome. There are already agreements to build insanely fast train connections and surely we can all remember the height of Concorde.
What’s next? Will we be clicking our fingers and teleporting in an instant? It wouldn’t surprise me if someone out there was literally working on this. We invest so much energy trying to ‘save time’ when as a country we live our lives on fast-forward.
Even with all our technological developments and modern achievements, western society is still unhappier than ever. Depression is on the rise and more and more people are off work with stress related illnesses. With the growing unease in Britain I hardly think a motorway speed increase would be productive. On the contrary. Britain. Needs. To. Slow. Down.
In bygone days where travel moved at a lulling pace and life just felt slower, people were actually much happier. Perhaps they knew that the secret to contentment was not how quickly they could arrive at a destination but whether or not they enjoyed the journey.
And as for the super speedy trains that the government are giving the go ahead to.. oh I could weep. Not only will we be whizzing around the country on dangerously high speeds, our poor countryside will get the brunt of it.
It really saddens me when more plans to ‘develop’ the country and ‘improve’ society involves losing what was naturally here in the first place. Our fields and country parks are a fraction of what they used to be, dare I imagine how they might be in 50 years’ time if these crazy developments keep taking place.
Where will you take your leisurely walks then, Mr Government, if there’s no more quiet parks to walk in?
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