Comma’s Legacy?

After Comma came off second best in an altercation with a speeding car in our street, I thought I’d give the council a call. Our street is the sort that seems to attract dickheads hoons, and some cars just absolutely cane along it. I thought I’d get a quick brush-off, but I was quickly put in touch with a traffic research guy who spent some time talking to me about Darebin’s policies and plans.

Apparently our street had already had testing done, and had been found to have low volumes of traffic, but high average speeds. The man said that they weren’t thinking about speed humps at this stage, but possibly other options like chicanes.

Anyway, a week later, I walk outside and there’s this honking great contraption sitting on the nature strip down the road.


I didn’t think it was possible for a council to act that fast! Maybe it was already coming, but I like to think Comma’s helping to make the street a safer place for everyone, especially little kids and little cats. So this thing’s called a SAM, and unfortunately no, it’s not a Surface-to-Air Missile which, while cool, wouldn’t be much good in prosecuting speeding drivers. Unless the drove so fast they took off, which you know, sometimes sounds like it’s going to happen.

No, it was just a radar gun with a display to show you your speed, which, while good, turned out to be pretty useless. People who drive at normal speeds kept driving at normal speeds, and people who speed would only accelerate to see how high a reading they could get! The kids across the street certainly loved it though. They spent hours out there on their pushbikes trying to do the same thing. Which was pretty cute.

We’ll see what develops…