I got a speeding ticket today. In the mail. For doing twenty-five miles per hour.
Yes. I am serious.
This is the fifth speeding ticket I’ve received in the thirty-five years I’ve been driving. That averages one ticket every seven years. Not a bad record, right?
Except that four of the five tickets were issued since we moved to Canada less than two years ago.
Think about that. In twenty-five years of driving, I got one speeding ticket. And in fact, when I got that ticket, I was clocked doing seventy, but my speedometer said I was doing fifty-eight in a fifty-five zone (which is speeding, granted, but not by much). Later we had the speedometer checked, and sure enough, it was off by exactly that amount due to oversized, after-market tires.
Then I moved to Canada. And I’ve gotten four tickets since then.
No doubt the RCMP thinks I’ve suddenly begun driving at crazy-mad speeds, but the truth is: I never speed. In fact, I’m a bit obsessive about the speed limit. Unless the road is icy, I set the cruise control to make sure I don’t speed. And if it is icy, I drive much slower (this might, coincidentally, have something to do with the fact that I have never, not once, not for one second, lost control of my vehicle here).
Actually, my tendency to drive the speed limit has gotten me into trouble because probably three-quarters* of the drivers around me speed, and they get seriously annoyed when I slow them down. I get honked at, brights flashed at, flipped off, and (most notably) twice run off the road precisely for driving the speed limit.



