Sundays in My City

You're driving along an unfamiliar road at night when suddenly you are blinded by a flash of yellow light. You momentarily panic, and then realize you've just been caught speeding. AAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH the frustration! You'll be getting a bill in the mail.

Sundays in My City are quiet days, everything's closed, except this is one service that never shuts down, day or night: the speed cameras we call blitzers. (Blitz is the word for flash on a camera.)

We have two in our tiny country town. They are crafty - they can be set to face either direction, so you never know, coming or going, which way is the "danger" direction. So you go sloooooow!

Here is an illustration of how many blitzers there are. They are everywhere, watching you. (Can you find Germany on this map? No, you can't. It's covered in blitzers: ))

I have had my picture taken twice now by the sentries who need no rest. It's frustrating, and for me, also humiliating because the bill always got sent to my father in law, the owner of that yellow car. The first time was in his neighborhood, on a street literally plastered with 30 signs, and I just wasn't paying attention, and drove a very cautious but criminal 40. It scares the crap out of you to be suddenly flashed. At night it's even worse. Try not to swerve off the road in the panic phase.

The second time I knew the speed limit, but I just wasn't paying attention and was again 10 kph over. An explosion of light filled my car and I just about wet myself. DANGIT another camera got me!

(Thankfully the Prius belongs to us, and if we speed, *WE* get the photos!)

I thought I looked pretty cool in my sunglasses in that first photo.

The second photo was so bad I look like a man. We didn't pay that one, because the state could not prove it was me. Apparently the state checks the license plate and then compares the photo with the car owner's family members' drivers license photos on file. That's why my name and personal info is on the bill. Why was the photo so unclear that time?

I suppose because they used this especially tricksey mobile blitzer, a camera inside a parked car. Isn't that mean? You have no idea where they will put these normal looking cars with cameras, so you dare not drive complacently, ever. I thought it was funny in the mornings listening to the news on the radio, they ask drivers to call in and report mobile blitzers, so that drivers are warned where they've parked them. (How can that be legal?)

Many blitzers are camouflaged. They know people will slow down if they can see the camera, so they hide them.








Aha, now I know what you are, you odd pole-looking thingy!










Uh oh, I'd never see that on the Autobahn!











The reason I'm doing such a negative Sunday post is just this week, my man told me about a blizter which made 10 million Euros in ONE YEAR. This particular blitzer is in our state, so I felt it deserved a Sunday in Northrhein Westfalia post!

10 million Euros in photos of speeding drivers, and they say it would have been more if they could have enforced it with all the foreign cars. I guess if you're from France and get blitzed here, you get off free.

I was happy to hear that all 10 million Euros went into city improvements, starting with their school buildings.

In America you watch for cops as you drive, because speed traps are manned. Here, you never have to worry about a cop on the autobahn, that's what the blitzers are for, freeing up the cops to do other things.

I think blitzers work. Now that we're hypermiling in our new car, we go the speed limit. Some people will always speed, but they'll also get caught. (Now if only my friend Keia up north would tell me how it is she's never, ever been caught!?)

For more Sundays in Others' Cities, go here: )