Be here now: the case for photo radar speed enforcement

“Our troubled relationship with time arises largely from this same effort to avoid the painful constraints of reality. And most of our strategies for becoming more productive make things worse, because they’re really just ways of furthering the avoidance. After all, it's painful to confront how limited your time is, because it means that tough choices are inevitable and that you won’t have time for all you once dreamed you might do.”  

Oliver Burkeman

Chapter 1: The Limit-Embracing Life, p. 30.

4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals

–

It is the type of call where you know in your gut that something is wrong. 

6:09am: Missed call - Mom

6:10am: Text - Sarah, please call me when you can. 

Remembering that they were in Edmonton, with a two hour time difference, my brain quickly computes that she called me at 4 in the morning. 

Something was wrong. 

Without even lifting my head off the pillow, I called back. No answer.

A minute later, my phone lights up. Through tears, she says, “Eric had a stroke. He is paralyzed on the right side of his body.”

–

This summer I promised myself that I was finally going to read for pleasure. I had just made it through a particularly gruelling exam period in the second year of my PhD, and for the first time in a long while, I was going to read books without them having been on a list that someone else created for me. But that endeavour was seemingly too nebulous and lackadaisical, and so my brain rather quickly decided that I needed to be the one to create the list; I settled on one book per week, so as to not shock the system too much. Old habits die hard. 

I was on book #5, having not completely finished #3 or #4, under the guise that they were not books to be read quickly, but moreso to be digested in small bits - Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem and the Bhagavad Gita, if you must know, as it will help me prove my case that they were worth abandoning a self-imposed schedule in order to savour them more contemplatively. In any case, at the recommendation of a friend, I picked up 4000 Hours - Time Management for Mere Mortals and was completely enthralled by the author’s unravelling of the concept of time: that we think we can ever really have it, that we can master it, that we can speed it up, that we can save it for later. All of this was really resonating with me. As someone who is chronically busy and struggles to fit it all in, this book gave me permission to peel back the layers and examine why I do anything at all, and maybe I needed to rethink not only my priorities, but also my relationship to reality. 

And then I got that call and time seemed to move at a different pace. It moved both slower and faster at the same time. Slipping into a familiar role as care-taker, problem-solver, over-thinker, I began to check in on siblings and compile a list of all the things that would need to be taken care of. I quickly realized that someone would need to fly to Edmonton to help my mom, my sister and my aunt. 

Approximately 48 hours later I was on a discount airline flight with only a personal item, because I’ll be damned if I counteract the outrageously cheap flight by paying an excessive amount in baggage fees. Attempting to defy the luggage racket, I fit all my belongings into a bag that was the maximum allowable size, being sure to include this fascinating book, knowing I would need moments of reprieve, distraction, and hopefully, enlightenment.

That enlightenment came through an unsuspecting and peculiar way: the photo-enforced speed calming measures on the streets of Edmonton.

–

Upon arrival at the YEG airport at an ungodly hour, I located my sister’s car in the parking garage and made my way to her house. From my last trip to Edmonton, where I received a speeding ticket, I remembered that everywhere (yes, in my mind, it's practically everywhere), there are speed traps. Instead of being an opportunity to save time, by being able to travel faster through space, driving becomes a predetermined activity that cannot be shortened. No matter how tired I am at 2:30am, I cannot go 20km over the speed limit to get to my sister’s house without incurring steep financial penalties.

In other words, getting from point A to point B takes the time that it takes and you can’t go any faster. Traveling faster through space has consequences. The ability to exert control is nullified. There was no need to worry about the time I think it should take, I am simply forced to experience driving for the time it took. Seeing as I was attending to nothing else, other than to be present for my family, this was an ideal scenario to settle in and not care about getting anywhere fast. 

It made me realize that the beautiful thing about time is that you can only experience it by being here now. It is precious because it is fleeting.

Sitting down with my family and having them recount the moment by moment event that saw my stepfather whisked away to the hospital in, what felt like, record time, it was clear that being at the right place at the right time potentially saved his life and lessened the severity of the impact of the stroke. 

The next day my family had planned to travel to Drumheller. What if Eric hadn’t woken up and yelled for help to call the ambulance? What if the stroke had happened a day later in the motel in the middle of nowhere? 

All of it unfolded exactly how it did. Time continued to move forward at its predetermined pace. All we can do is be present for it to happen.

My Mom, who I undoubtedly get my race car mentality and lead foot driving skills from, was the first to comment on the enforced traffic calming.

“You really have to pay attention to how fast you’re going.”

Driving became a really immersive experience, where I could not apply my own desires to control the situation. The time to get to the hospital was 20 minutes (as per the GPS), and while I could try to take different routes to proverbially and literally cut corners, if I told my Mom that I would pick her up at 7:30pm and I left at 7:15pm, I would surely be late.

One night, my Mom came home from a 12 hour day at the hospital, where had positively reported that my stepdad had sat up for more than 3 hours and they were generally feeling optimistic about his recovery. During a nap, she told me about how she found a video of my now-6 year old daughter on her phone from when she was a baby. She began to cry.

“Time just goes so fast. You will never know what can happen from one moment to the next.”

She began to lament all that had changed, how Eric may not be able to pick up his grandkids again (or at least for a while). I thought about how I was only ever going to experience my daughter at the age that she is now. I can’t go back and I certainly can’t go forward.

–

We like to have control over our time and our environment.

Maybe the resistance to lowering speed limits and photo-enforced traffic calming lies in the fact that we think we have more control over our time than we actually do. We resist the idea of some omnipotent being (in the form of cameras!) having the ability to regulate our traffic flows, thinking that we need to have agency over our own destinies. Being told to slow down for others feels counterintuitive to our sense of self-importance. Lowering and enforcing a 30km/hour speed limit is an alternate construct to the one we are used to. Time seems to pass so slowly, that we actually have to feel it.

This new view of speed requires us to accept that we are not in control - that we will get there when we get there. We have to be present for our surroundings. 

The same is true for my family. The recovery will progress as it needs to. The children will grow up just as we hope they will. The books will be read at the pace that they are read. The car will travel at the speed that it does. 

The only choice we have is if we accept it and pay attention.