This week is Road Safety Week and Swansway are getting involved by talking speed, specifically speeding. In Aesop’s fable, the tortoise reigned victorious despite travelling at a much slower speed, yet he is far from the only example of a safe pace winning the race. In fact, a study from the University of Auckland has found that although speeding will of course get you somewhere faster, the time difference is not as big as you’d think, and not worth endangering lives for. Here are some iconic moments which saw slow and steady win the race… literally!
Research from the University of Auckland has found that speeding up has less of an impact the higher the speed we reach. Of course, you will get somewhere faster, if you travel at 80mph, rather than 70mph, the difference is marginal at best.
If you drove 10km at 10kph it would take an hour, and if you drove the same distance at 20kph it would only take half an hour. Fair enough, this is a big difference, although how often are you required to drive at just 10kph? Driving at 70kph for 10 kilometres would take only 1 minute longer than driving the same distance at 80kph. Even on longer journeys, the distance is certainly not worth the risk; the time saved by driving 100km (62 miles) at 100kph (62mph) rather than 90kph (55mph) is just 7 minutes. Think about how many sets of traffic lights, roundabouts, and general stoppages on the road you encounter, suddenly that 7 minutes counts for nothing. The best way to save time on the roads is not speeding, but planning your journey ahead and ultimately, hoping that the road is free from stoppages, something swimmer Eric Moussambani knows all about…
The 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney saw some heroic feats of athletic prowess, who could forgot Tanni Grey-Thompson winning a fourth gold medal or Denise Lewis dominating the heptathlon. But it was in the swimming pool where the biggest waves were made. Eric Moussambani, from Equatorial Guinea, won his 100m freestyle heat in a record slow time of 1 minute 52.72 seconds. Despite only taking up swimming earlier that year and having never seen an Olympic sized swimming pool before, let alone swam in one, Moussambani finished first in his race to rapturous applause from the Australian spectators. After the other competitors in his heat false started, Eric’s lack of speed still saw him to victory in a clear victory for the tortoise’s approach over the hare’s.
Swimming is not the only sporting arena in which a steadier pace can often prove most successful. In tennis, the drop shot is capable of winning points by taking the speed out of the opponent’s shots, the finessed shot in football is often slower but more accurate than absolutely pelting it at the keeper, and in snooker rushing a shot can often led to a costly mistake. Recently Nick Kyrgios has kept tennis players guessing with the underarm serve which breaks convention but deploys a reduction in speed to great effect.
In fact, even Motorsport see drivers look to reduce pace to enhance performance at times. In the 2017 Mexican Grand Prix, race leader Max Verstappen was told by the RedBull team to slow down to save his engine and tyres, after following team orders he won the race. Famously, F1 legend Nikki Lauda, stated that he would often drive slowly to win; the calculated Austrian always aware of the risk-reward ratio when driving, as anyone who has seen the film Rush will know.
What is clear from all these examples is that patience is a virtue. In a world of traffic lights, roundabouts and roadworks, there is far more to gain for the tortoise than the hare. How often do you accelerate away from one set of lights only to see the same car as a few moments ago pull up behind you at the next set of lights? You have gained zero-time speeding. Not only is little to gain from speeding, but there is also far more to lose. In the fable the hare’s shortcoming was his ignorance and complacency, “It won’t happen to me” he thought as he decided to sleep mid-race.
