Slow ride

Do you know how much IB exams cost? I learned the answer to that question the hard way (which is how I learn most things). The answer is “a shit ton.” Each IB exam costs a shit ton of money, and my son has to take a shit ton of IB exams. Never mind the cost of college. Let’s talk about the cost of getting ready to go to college. I can either support my ridiculous handbag habit, or I can pay for IB exams and university application fees. I can’t do both. 

*****

And do you know what I found in the mail today, right after I finished draining my checking account to pay off the shakedown artists of the International Baccalaureate? A speed camera ticket. A SPEED CAMERA TICKET! I drive like a blind old woman on her way to confession on Saturday, and Montgomery County Maryland expects me to believe that I was caught on camera doing 47 in a 35. On CONNECTICUT AVENUE AT 5:15 on a WEDNESDAY. People walk faster than automobile traffic moves on Connecticut during the afternoon rush hour. Bubba Wallace couldn’t go 47 on Connecticut Avenue between Jones Bridge and Knowles Avenue at 5:15 on a Wednesday. The whole thing is suspect. Suspect, I tell you. 

*****

I wrote this yesterday in a huff of righteous indignation. I was ready to contest that ticket. I was ready to fight City Hall. I was ready to stick it to the man. 

The thing is, I’d have to write emails. I’d have to talk to people on the phone. I might even have to go to court. Do I look like I have time for all that? I haven’t looked at the video yet, but today, I am just as strongly inclined to just pay the stupid $40 and get it over with as I was determined yesterday to fight like Norma Rae on the factory floor. 

$40 is a strategic amount, isn’t it? If it was $50, even though $50 isn’t what it was ten years ago or even one year ago, more people would push back. “Fifty bucks,” they’d think. That’s midway to a hundred. That’s half a Benjamin. But $40? I don’t know, it just seems so much less than $50. If a kid tells you he needs $40 for a school fee, you just hand over the cash. If he needs $50, you say “What? Fifty dollars? Are they crazy?” 

Unless you just paid for a shit ton of IB exams, in which case $50 will seem like chump change. 

*****

“Chump change.” Now I’m a gum-snapping, fast-talking wide-shoulder dame from a 1940s screwball comedy. Which really is not a bad thing to be. I think I was born too late. I belong in a George Cukor-type movie with a script by Donald Ogden Stewart, playing the wisecracking best friend. They could have called me any time Rosalind Russell or Eve Arden were busy. That was a better time, assuming that you’re willing to overlook the racism and the sexism and the manual transmissions. 

OK, so it wasn’t a better time except for one thing: In those days, they had to actually see you speeding if they wanted to give you a ticket. 

******

I started writing this two weeks ago, and in the interim, I received yet another speed camera ticket. This time, I was allegedly driving 47 in a 35 in Darnestown, which is well out of range of my usual stomping grounds. I was driving to a friend’s brother’s funeral. No good deed goes unpunished, you know? 

I still haven’t paid the first ticket, and now I have two, and I’m thinking of contesting both of them. There is no video of either incident. There are photographs that prove that my car was near the cameras, but no moving footage showing how fast I was going, and I have absolutely no way of ascertaining whether or not the camera’s triggering mechanism is properly calibrated. If I contest the tickets and go to court, I could end up paying both the fines and court costs, plus I’d lose part of a work day. I don’t know if it’s worth the time or money. On the other hand, this feels very arbitrary and unfair and I find myself very much unwilling to remit $40 to the County every time they decide to drop a speed limit in order to generate some revenue. 

I think I’ll do some research on court costs and likelihood of a positive outcome, and then I’ll decide what to do. 

*****

Yeah, I paid them. I know.

I’m telling you, I was ready to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court. And when I learned that court costs are usually assessed at less than $25, I was even more enthusiastic about this plan. Then my husband, a police officer, dissuaded me. “They will find you guilty,” he said. “They find everybody guilty - some guy from Safe Speed testifies that the triggering mechanism is properly calibrated and that the camera system is working just fine, and then unless you can prove exigent circumstances or that you were not driving the car, you’ll pay the fine and the court costs and you’ll have wasted half a day, at least.” 

“But...” I said. 

“No ‘but’,” he said. “That’s just how it works. That is how it always works. Do what you want, but when you sit in court all day and still come home $125 poorer, don’t think I won’t say ‘I told you so,’ because I totally will.” 

I’ve been married to this man for 22 years, so I didn’t think for a second that he wouldn’t say “I told you so.” And that is what decided it, really. I could live with the $125. I could even live with losing a day of my life to Maryland Circuit Court. But I couldn’t live with a week or more of “I told you so.”  Everyone has a breaking point. 

*****

The next day, Saturday, I was driving home from my son’s swim meet in Laurel. It was 6 PM, already dark, and my night vision was cooperating. I could see perfectly well, and I got us from the Fairland Aquatic Center on to Maryland 200, known around these parts as the ICC, with no difficulty whatsoever. I moved into the center lane, keeping my speed at around 62 as traffic whizzed past me on both sides. A few people honked as they flew by, obviously annoyed by my determination to obey the 60 MPH speed limit as closely as possible. But I didn’t care. People can climb up my bumper, they can pass me, and they can honk all the livelong day. I was already a cautious driver, and now I’m taking caution to a new level. I’m finished handing over fat stacks of cash to the extortionists at Montgomery County Safe Speed. It’s slow ride time, from now on.