Traffic Calming Measures

Parallelogram Tachograph was not initially unduly worried about the increasing incidence of speed bumps and other traffic calming measures, for having the dexterous and supple wrists of the professional weasel-mesmeriser meant that she could steer her moped through the most complex traffic calming measures ever invented by a local highways department, even the ones created on a Friday afternoon after a long ‘lunch’ in the pub where most members of the Traffic Calming Measures Department were transported back to the office in wheelbarrows.

Oddly enough, most of the local traffic calming measures in her locality, that Tachograph had to negotiate, were in fact developed on a Friday afternoon. These traffic calming measures where created by rearranging the office furniture in the town planning department then tying to drunkenly navigate around the obstacles whilst pushing a drunk and unconscious member of staff around the resulting course.

Obviously, the more complex and befuddling system created on those drunken Friday afternoons were the ones put forward by the planning department for the use of the Highways Department whenever some new traffic calming measures were urgently needed. Especially so, when it was discovered that commuters and other road users were managing to get to their destinations with only the minimum disruption, inconvenience and with little on no damage to their vehicles.

As the traffic calming measures increased in number and complexity, Parallelogram Tachograph no longer had the patience to constantly negotiate these increasingly Byzantine labyrinths on her way to mesmerise a weasel, especially if it was an emergency call-out which necessitated she reach her destination with alacrity, lest the un-mesmerised weasel run amok causing chaos and consternation to all in its immediate vicinity.

So, one Friday lunchtime, Tachograph set out on her moped to redirect all the road signs along the route the Traffic Calming Measures staff would take on returning from their usual pub to the Local Planning Office.

Then, a few hours later, the entire council Highways Department staff, weaved their slow, staggering way back to what they thought would be their office. As good and conscientious workers in the Highways, Department, they – of course – followed all the road signs to the letter, right up to and – slightly – beyond the point where they all: wheelbarrows, unconscious occupants and their drunken pushers, all fell over the sheer cliffs into the sea.

Being a typical local government authority, no-one working for the council noticed that an entire department had suddenly gone missing one Friday lunchtime, never to be seen again.

Consequently as a result of Tachograph’s sabotage, all the town’s traffic calming measures slowly fell into disrepair, and eventually all disappeared, leaving the townspeople to go about their normal business and actually get where they wanted to go with little disruption, interference or stress.

And, so, everyone lived happily ever after….

At least until someone in government noticed there was an area of the country that was living relatively stress-free lives, unencumbered by over-intrusive but inept bureaucracy and its pettifogging rules and regulations that attempted to control and distort those people’s lives,

The powers-that-be realised that this would never do and must be stopped before it spread to the rest of the country.

So, one morning, on the outskirts of that town, a small army of researchers appeared on the horizon, all armed with a clipboard and each with a multitude of boxes that needed ticking.