You can only drive 100 kph around dangerous bends !

If you were there I feel your pain. By now you too will have received your letter from the Gardaí, informing you that you were speeding. You’ll have two points on your licence and be €80 lighter after paying your fines.

The speed limit was 50kph and I was doing 64kph, which means my car was moving at the mind-bending nosebleed-inducing speed of 39mph in the old money.

So yes, I’m guilty as charged. It’s a fair cop Guv, as they say where I’m from. I’m a criminal, a dirty filthy law-breaker, so slap those penalty points on my licence before my insurance premium starts to look affordable.

Actually I’m not sure that speeding counts as a crime. It’s more of an offence. If there is a crime being committed here, it concerns the way that our collective insurance companies will be creaming money off our bad luck.

Yes, I did say bad luck. There are places where it is essential to have a speed limit of 50kph. I’ve seen the TV ads that tell us if you hit a child at 50kph it has an 80% chance of survival, but if you’re travelling at 80kph, it has a 50% chance of fatal injuries. That’s a pretty powerful argument, so I wouldn’t count myself ‘unlucky’ if I was caught speeding in a built-up area, where children might be playing.

But this wasn’t a built-up area. This was the road from Galway to Moycullen, as it pushes through Bushypark. The Camera Van was parked in the lay-by in front of the church which, to be fair, seems permanently busy with visitors, worshippers and events.

So impose a 50kph limit for 300 metres each side of the church, to protect the innocent humans, and let the limit beyond and before rise to a reasonable 80kph.

How do I know that others have been charged too? That’d be because I remember the precise time and place we committed our collective offences.

It was a calm sunny Spring afternoon, and I was driving along in a steady stream of traffic. For once, there was nobody tailgating. Not a boy racer in sight. All of us drivers were keeping well apart from each other, easily in range of our braking distances.

For once the world felt like a safe and civilised place. I think I was whistling tunelessly along to a Mozart violin concerto, daring to enjoy myself, and then I saw the Camera Van parked by the church.

At the time I remember thinking to myself that if they nicked me, they’d have to nick everyone else in that steady stream of traffic. Little did I suspect that they intended to do exactly that.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.