Has anyone ever been fined for breaking the 20mph speed limit in Lambeth?

If you're cruising down this street at 55mph in your
Audi - as you do, don't deny it - would you even notice
this little roundel hiding in the shadows?

Does anyone make a cheap, reliable hand-held speed camera? During 2019, that grim year now blessedly over, speeding vehicles became one of the worst of hundreds of other daily annoyances that further depressed all quality-of-life measures in the stinking rich slums of south-west London. Yes, we need something to fight back with, us beleagured pedestrians.

If such devices exist, they should be bought in bulk by local authorities and handed out at libraries, doctors surgeries etc so that people can give lunatic drivers a little scare as they blast down residential roads at two or three times the speed limit.

So tell me, has anyone ever been banned, imprisoned or even fined for going at 24mph in a 20 mph limit  area?

Tell me, honestly, have you ever seen anyone driving at less than 25mph in a 20mph limit area? Really? I cycle at more than 20mph in some parts of London and clever signs start flashing at me furiously, kill your speed! But not round here.

In this wide,  almost straight street with no speed bumps, we're used to rat-runners paying no heed of the pathetic 20mph limit signs, and having no thought for pedestrians (who include kids going to and coming out of the local primary school).

Lambeth introduced the 20mph limit all over the borough a few years ago. Seems putting up a few inadequate signs was a cheap solution to residents' demands for traffic calming measures, rather than adding bumps or chicanery, speed cameras, planting trees etc, as requested at various "your voice counts" meetings with the planners.

This flimsy little 20mph limit sign looks more like one of those
horrible pennants used by property developers to guide people
to their "marketing suites"

I regularly have to get out of the way of cars and even big trucks going three times that speed....and perhaps more.  Trouble is the road is also used as a sort of drag strip for drivers who like to prove their manhood by shattering everyone else's peace. Not just boy racers but plump 40-year-old city types giving their silly McLarens, Mercs and Maseratis a bit of an airing.

Then there are the speeding delivery vans. Don't get me on this subject, which is at least 300 of the other 364 things wrong with the past year. These huge boxes on wheels, whether scruffy old white Transits or shiny new DHL vans, are one of many reasons we should all stop using Amazon, Ocado, and all other delivery services, unless we really can't use our poor fat little legs to make it to a London's quite good variety of retail outlets.

There are 20 mph speed limit cameras on Wandsworth Road and Acre Lane and probably loads of other places in the borough. I've seen those two flashing four or five times in the space of five minutes. Are these drivers getting speeding tickets and fines? I've never even seen police doing spot checks on these streets. Presumably they couldn't spare the personnel.

Other things which made 2019 shit and will probably make 2020 even shitter:

• Linked to the above - the ever-increasing girth and ghastliness of SUVs.  Who on earth believes a fat black Range Rover is something to aspire to?
• Linked to the above - the ear-splitting loudness of car horns, the sort people pay extra for in order to add to the fuck-off factor of their vehicle. A possible legislative solution to this dreadful form of auditory pollution was suggested on this blog many years ago.
• Linked to the above - small motorbikes that make more noise than even big trucks and buses. And luxury cars that have clearly had their exhaust systems expensively tweaked in order to emit a much louder roar when the driver revs it at lights.
• Linked to the above: why is Lambeth still allowing so many of its super-rich residents to pave over their front gardens, or worse still, to dig out underground cinemas or swimming pools or whatever else it is they need, thereby wrecking their neighbour's lives for months with endless flotillas of four-axle dumper trucks, skip deliveries, and even those revolting portaloos for the poor workers half-blocking pavements?
• Linked to the above: more and more trucks, vans and even car-sized pick-up trucks displaying "Cyclists Beware" signs on their rear panels. Honestly, if you can't see what's behind you or alongside you on the nearside of your vehicle, from your driving position, should that vehicle be legal in this congested city?
• Linked to above: often the silliest most trivial things annoy most. Last year it was the proliferation of those multi-LED indicator lights on the back of the newest SUVs and other flash-harry vehicles - the sort that seem to lick their way around the back of the car. Like the flicking tongues of some venemous reptile.
• Linked to the above - over-use of phrases such as "linked to the above"; proliferation of old farts using blogs to evacuate their spleen into the idiot wind of the internet, which merely blows it all back into their own twisted faces?
• Case rested.

Two London blights for the price of one photo: the crazy congestion caused by delivery vans thanks to Amazon, etc; and the

continuing madness of paving over front gardens...removing green patches, adding to flood risk.