Mike Rutherford's column

By Mike Rutherford

29th August 2007

	Do our numerous speed enforcement agents really have any more credibility than a pair of dodgy Croat traffic policemen?

Went for a drive across Croatia last week. As you do. It’s a beautiful country but, at the same time, scarily disfigured. Thankfully, there aren’t too many places this close to home where you can see – and even walk inside – houses and other buildings that have been peppered with bullets,
or taken direct hits from grenades, as recently as the Nineties.

It has some rather different rules of the road than us, too – one
of them being that there is a zero-tolerance attitude towards drink-driving. The hilarious side of this law is that priests, whose job involves swigging
wine in church, are more opposed to the legislation than anyone.

But on a more serious note, I welcomed the rule and, aware that I had to drive in the late afternoon, didn’t touch a drop of booze over lunch. Such
a law means there’s absolutely no way someone will get confused as to
how much they can have and remain under the limit.

Another quirky thing about Croatia is that the locals regularly drive like speed-hungry lunatics. Then they drop to inappropriately slow speeds for
no apparent reason. But it’s not as if they’re following roadside instructions
or anything, because there are desperately few signs. It’s more a case of
them knowing where iffy traffic cops are likely to hide.

Exactly what the deal is when these armed, peak-capped officers flag
you down is anyone’s guess. On our test drive of the new Kia Cee’d SW, two of my colleagues got pulled over. One is a notorious smooth talker, who could not only sell sand to the Arabs, but charge them a handsome price for it, too. He turned on the charm, apologised to the Croat cops for the speeding crime he allegedly committed and was let off.

Yet for the other, the circumstances were completely different. In view of the apparent seriousness of his alleged speeding offence, he was given a couple of options: would he like to go to a jail cell, or would he prefer to hand over the equivalent of around £30 – in cash? Surprise, surprise, he chose the latter.

But when he handed over the money, the traffic police didn’t issue a receipt. Also, they advised him that as they had let him off lightly – the speed he was doing would normally warrant a trip to the police station, having his licence confiscated and a heftier fine – he shouldn’t tell anyone about the incident. Not unreasonably, the journo concluded his money was trousered by the Croat cops.

If, as expected, they did take a bung, the law fell into disrepute, justice wasn’t served and they were plainly in the wrong. Nobody in their right
mind could argue that corrupt officers are of any use to anyone, least of
all themselves, because they will almost certainly get found out eventually.

But really, does the British Government and its numerous speed enforcement agents have much more credibility than a pair of dodgy Croatian traffic cops when it comes to stealing money from the wallets of motorists? After all, take the M1 at 3am in the morning, for instance – it’s blessed with a cynically low 50mph limit and cameras checking average speeds. This has nothing to do with road safety, but everything to do with blatant revenue raising. Not sure what sickens me more: poor, unelected, motorist-milking cops on the take, or a wealthy, unelected, motorist-hating Prime Minister on the make.