English Listening Practice: British English Podcast - Driving Over the Limit

You are listening to the English Like a Native Podcast, a listening

resource for intermediate and advanced level English language learners.

There are bonus episodes and transcripts available to Plus Members.

I'll leave details in the show notes, and if you are interested in

English courses, then head over to my website www.englishlikeanative.co.uk.

Hello there.

You're listening to the English Like a Native Podcast.

I'm sure you've already gathered since you pressed 'play'.

This podcast is designed for lovers and learners of English.

I'm your host, Anna, and today we're getting in our car and

I'm taking you over the limit,

over the speed limit that is not over the drink drive limit.

Normally, if you say that you are driving over the limit, then you are suggesting

that you are driving with an unacceptable amount of alcohol in your bloodstream.

Basically, you are driving drunk and we call the person who drives

while drunk a drunk driver.

"Oh, what happened to your garden wall?

It's fallen down at one end."

"Yeah, a drunk driver crashed into it last week."

I don't know why I decided to do that Northern, but there you go.

A drunk driver.

So legally driving while drunk is referred to as a DUI offence.

So DUI stands for driving under the influence, but I am not here

to talk about drink driving.

The focus of today's podcast is something that a lot of us are guilty of - speeding.

In the UK we measure speed in miles per hour rather than kilometres per hour.

Our fastest roads are called motorways.

These are the large roads.

Often they have three to five lanes of traffic on either side.

Motorways will always have some form of central reservation, like a barrier that

goes and separates the traffic travelling in one direction from the traffic

travelling in the opposite direction.

I am sure that the highway agencies learnt very early on that if someone

loses control of their vehicle, then less damage will arise if they drive into

a barrier, rather than have a head-on collision with a vehicle travelling at 70

miles an hour in the opposite direction.

And 70 miles per hour is the absolute limit in the UK you cannot drive

legally faster than 70 miles per hour on any UK motorway or dual carriageway.

And 70 miles per hour is about 112 kilometres per hour.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I'm driving down the motorway and

it's an open road, by open road, I mean my progress is not impeded.

There's no traffic or road works to slow me down.

So if it's an open road, then I find it quite hard to stick to the speed limit.

This is exactly where cruise control comes in handy.

So cruise control is a feature in many modern cars, which allows

you to set the speed, so it'll keep the car going at that speed.

So therefore, if I'm on a long stretch of motorway and I don't want my speed

to accidentally creep up past 70 miles an hour, I can set my cruise control

to 68 miles per hour and just relax.

But here's a question, something that's always puzzled me.

Why sell vehicles that are capable of speeds in excess of a

hundred miles per hour when our upper limit is 70 miles per hour?

In excess of means more than, greater than.

So why sell vehicles that are capable of speeds in excess of

a hundred miles an hour when our upper limit is 70 miles an hour?

Now you might notice I'm saying miles an hour rather than miles per hour.

Hmm.

What am I doing?

Well, this is very common.

When we speak freely, it's common to change per for an, it just makes it flow.

It's easier to say miles per hour.

Miles an hour.

It's easier.

So don't be surprised if you hear miles an hour.

So my car, for example, is capable of doing around 110 miles per hour.

So if I decided to put my foot down, I could be zipping past all the law

abiding citizens trundling along at 60 or 70 miles per hour while I tear down

the road at nearly twice the speed.

Why give me that capability?

If it's against the law, why make it possible and why make the top

speed of a vehicle a selling point?

Something for marketeers to brag about when trying to encourage people to buy.

It's like saying,

"Hey, buy this Amazon hairpin, which can also pick locks, allowing you to

break into someone's house with ease."

or

"Oh, this solid sledgehammer is so powerful that you could hammer your

way into a bank vault in minutes."

Advertising top speed is boasting about a feature that is illegal to actually use.

So in my mind, that's crazy, but maybe there's a reason.

Maybe I'm missing something.

Maybe you need to have an open top speed to be able to have fast acceleration.

I don't know.

But I'm also sure that there's a way to limit speed so that people are

unable to go past a certain point.

Now, perhaps I'm being cynical here, but maybe the reason we don't have

limits on our speed to prevent us from speeding, maybe the reason is money.

Now, I recently read that speeding fine revenue, so money that was made

from people paying fines for speeding, speeding fine revenue brought in a

whopping, are you ready for this, 78.3 million pounds last year.

Need I say more?

78.3 million pounds.

I can't even really imagine that much money.

That's so much money.

So I'm sure the government are thinking, oh wow, there's this device

that can stop people from speeding.

Should we bring it in?

Should we make it mandatory for these things to be fitted to every car?

Stop people from speeding?

"Um, but governor, that would mean that we'll lose out on that 78 million that we

make every year", "Ah, yes, good point.

No, let them keep speeding".

Who knows?

Who knows what the real conversation is?

Anyway, more recently there has actually been a big push around London boroughs

to reduce the speed limit within kind of residential areas from 30 miles an hour.

And this is standard, so in a built up area like a town or anywhere

where there's lots of houses and buildings and people milling around,

the speed limit is 30 miles an hour.

So there's this push to reduce the speed limit from 30 down to 20 miles per hour.

Oh, now 20 miles per hour was always a thing, but only around areas where there

were like schools or vulnerable people likely to be around, so maybe outside

a hospital or something like that.

But now in lots of residential streets, including mine, we're waking up to

new 20-mile per hour signs being erected and painting on the road.

In fact, I witnessed the other day a sign being painted onto the road.

It's something I've never seen before and I was quite fascinated.

So I saw a big vehicle pull over on the side of our street from the window.

I wasn't being a curtain twitcher, I was just upstairs making the bed,

opening all the blinds, and I saw this vehicle pull over on the side of

the road and I was like, "Oh, boys".

So I call my children to come and take a look because they love all industrial

style vehicles and we watched as two men jumped out and using their feet to measure

and a piece of chalk to mark and a chalk line to mark straight lines, they created

a box and an oval shape very quickly.

And I'm talking minutes.

And then one man grabs a metal box attached to a pole while the other

man poured white paint into the box and in 30 seconds, he very skillfully

created a perfectly measured number 20, two and zero in an oval on the road.

Now I can't even draw a perfect square or a straight line.

I certainly can't, like reproduce perfectly measured numbers.

So we were so impressed that we opened the window to applaud their efforts and then

felt absolutely gutted to see an impatient driver in a van drive over the wet paint,

smudging it and leaving dirty tyre prints in the otherwise pristine paint work.

And the men who'd just done this painting also witnessed it.

It must have been quite devastating, but I'm sure it wasn't the first time.

So my road and my wider community is now a 20-mile per hour zone.

And of all the speed limits that I have to adhere to, I find 20-miles

per hour really hard to stick to.

It's not that I don't want to adhere to the rules.

I'm not a speed devil or anything.

I'm not in any hurry.

I'm not in a rush.

I just find that where my foot naturally rests on the accelerator.

That natural resting place pushes the car closer to about 28 miles per hour,

so to stay below 20 miles per hour means I have to constantly watch the

speedometer and I'm pumping on the brake and I'm adjusting the pressure on the

accelerator, and it's quite tiring.

Of course, speeding measures do help to keep your speed in check, and by speeding

measures I mean things that make you slow down, things that are put in place

on the roads to make you slow down.

In the UK we have lots of these speed measures and they

are things like speed bumps.

These are also known as speed humps, like the hump on a camel

and/or sleeping policemen.

Though, if you saw a real policeman randomly sleeping in the middle of the

road and you intentionally drove over him, then I think you'd be in a lot of trouble.

But sleeping policeman, this is what they have been called.

Speed bumps or speed humps is what we commonly call them.

They are unforgiving bumps placed in the road to make you slow down, and if you

do hit them at a higher speed, then your suspension will not thank you for it.

In fact, you will likely do some damage to your vehicle.

Now I once had a car that was quite low to the ground and a very nasty speed bump

that I had to go over regularly would often scrape the underneath of my car if

I didn't go over it at a snail's pace.

Now, besides bumps as a speeding measure, we also have speed cameras.

These are painted bright yellow so that you can see them and slow down in advance.

There are usually markers painted onto the road, so lines painted on the road so

that the camera can measure your distance over time to know what speed you're doing.

So spotting those in advance makes you slow down.

We also have road narrowing.

Now. I hate this particular measure.

They narrow the roads to be just a fraction wider than the average car,

and they place high curbs and big metal bollards on either side, and

these bollards are always without fail covered in scratches and multicoloured

paint work from the multiple vehicles that were unlucky enough to misjudge

their passage through this point.

I always grit my teeth as I crawl through these things.

I'm so scared to damage the car.

I don't think it's fair at all.

I mean, scraping your hubcaps or damaging your paint work on the car

is very expensive, but I do have to say that it is a very effective

way to slow people right down.

Now, the other measure that you'll find around the UK to slow

people down is flashing signs.

So these are like digital displays that read your speed as you approach

them, and they flash your speed at you.

To show you how fast you're going, and this number is followed either by

a smiley face, a green smiley face, well done you because you are within

the limit or a big, red, sad face because you are over the speed limit.

Now for me, this definitely works well, as it acts as a reminder and

shows the wider world as well, so it's socially shaming or praising you.

Which from a psychological point of view, is an excellent way

to make people fall in line.

So I do have to admit that I have been caught speeding once.

I was very naughty.

It was late one evening, I was driving home after a late shift with an open road

ahead of me because it was so late, no one was out, which in my defence, had

recently been changed from a 40-mile an hour road to a 30-mile an hour road.

So I was used to driving 40 down this road and the change had just come in.

I wasn't even aware of the change.

I was on autopilot doing the same thing I did every night after work.

Now this was a route I'd been taking for two years.

So, you know, my autopilot was well and truly on.

So I'm doing 36 miles an hour down this road as I always did,

and a policeman with a speed gun.

Because they like to come out at the point where they just change the limit

so that they can catch some people like me who aren't aware of the changes.

This policeman with a speed gun clocked me going 36 miles an hour

and booked me, I say, booked me.

He obviously made a note of my details and then sent me a letter.

I got the letter that you never want to get.

I had my knuckles wrapped metaphorically.

I think I had to take some points and I had a fine, and I had to

do a speed awareness course where I learned all about the dangers

of speeding and from that point forward, I have been a model citizen.

I always drive or I try to, I always drive within the speed limits.

I'm a very considerate driver.

Now I'm going to explain to you some of the vocabulary that you have just heard.

So one of the phrases I used was to put my foot down.

Now you'll hear this in different contexts.

When we're talking about driving, to put your foot down means to, it's like putting

your foot hard down on the accelerator.

You are going to speed up.

So if I say to you,

"Come on, put your foot down, we're going to be late."

I'm saying to you,

"Speed up.

Let's go.

You're driving too slow.

Put your foot down."

Or if I am heavily pregnant and having contractions in the back of the car,

"This baby's coming now."

"I know darling, but the speed limit is 30 miles an hour."

"I don't care.

The baby is coming out.

Put your foot down."

So it means to hurry up.

In other contexts, to put your foot down means to put a stop to

something because you have authority.

So, a father might put his foot down when the teenage son says,

"Dad, I'm gonna take the car this weekend and I'm gonna put my foot down.

I don't care.

I'm gonna drive as fast as I wanna drive."

And then dad says,

"Oh no you're not.

I know we said you could use the car whenever you wanted to.

But this time you, you just told me that you're going to be speeding.

So this time I'm putting my foot down and I'm taking the car keys.

You're not having the car."

So the next phrase is to tear down the road.

I said that I might decide to experiment with the speed of my car, see if I could

do what is advertised as being able to do as a top speed, and I might put my

foot down and go tearing down the road.

Now in this context to tear down the road is to go down the road very fast, or it

might suggest that you do it very noisily.

One of my biggest bugbears is those really noisy exhaust pipes that

people love to put on their vehicles.

I'm sorry if you're listening and you love noisy exhausts and you've

got two big exhausts on your bike or on your car, but I hate them.

I don't hate many things, but I get really angry when I hear these

things tearing down the road.

They make so much noise and often where I live, there's a lot of

them and they go down my street, which is a residential street.

I'm not near a big town or clubs or pubs.

This is just where people are sleeping and there's lots of children, lots of old

people trying to rest and enjoy the peace and quiet of the evening, and these very

noisy exhausts can be heard at midnight, one o'clock in the morning, and I just

think it's really unpleasant and really, oh, what's the word, inconsiderate.

It's very inconsiderate.

So I hear these things tearing down the road, or it might also indicate

speed going down the road very fast.

My next phrase that I'd want to share with you is I said, if you go over

a speed bump too fast, then your suspension will not thank you for it.

Now, if something will not thank you for it.

It means that it won't be very good for that thing or that person.

So you would normally say, talk about an action or something that you might do, and

then you follow it up with, but if I do this thing or when I did this thing, it

negatively impacted someone or it might negatively impact someone or something.

So for example if I jump off this six-foot wall onto a concrete floor 10 times

a day, I might feel really cool, but my knees will be negatively impacted.

So I can say,

"But my knees won't thank me for it."

Okay.

Or I might say to my friend,

"Hey, I can jump big jumps.

I don't care that the floor is concrete.

I jump off that wall 10 times a day."

You might say to me,

"Well, I'm sure your knees won't thank you for it in the future when you can't

walk, because your knees are just a mess."

Alright.

The next phrase I use that I want to share with you is to creep up.

To creep up.

Now, if I'm talking about one person creeping up on another person,

it means you approach someone and get very close to someone without

them knowing that they're there.

So, for example, in a horror film, often the baddie, the monster, whatever it is,

will creep up on the unsuspecting victim who's just standing there looking pretty.

"Oh, what a beautiful night.

Oh, look at the stars and the moon.

Oh, this is a wonderful night to be alone in the middle of a forest.

Oh, I'm glad that I'm safe here."

When creeping up behind them is, you know, someone who's got some terrible

plans in mind, they've crept up and this poor unsuspecting victim has

no idea until they pop up and go,

"Ah, got ya."

But we also use the phrasal verb creep up for talking about

anything that takes us by surprise.

Usually age is one thing, so,

"Oh it's my 60th birthday party tomorrow."

"You're 60?"

"Yeah.

Yeah, I am."

"Wow.

It feels like only yesterday you were turning 40.

How, what?

You're 60!"

"Yeah. I know.

It's really crept up on me.

I, I, yeah.

Yeah. I don't know where it's come from either.

I don't feel like I'm turning 60, but I am.

I've got my birth certificate to prove it."

In this case, I was talking about my speed, and often when we are

driving along the street, we're aware of the speed limit and we feel

like we're doing the speed limit.

But then when you look down at your speedometer, you realise that your

speed has incrementally crept up just one mile an hour, two miles

an hour, three, four miles an hour.

"Oh my goodness me, I'm doing 25 in a 20.

Quick, brake, brake, brake, pull off the accelerator."

So when something takes you by surprise.

And the last phrase I'm gonna share with you is a snail's pace.

This is a nice little idiom, to do something at a snail's pace.

I'm sure you can guess the pace of a snail, the speed of a snail is

very slow, so if I do something at a snail's pace, then I'm doing it very,

very slowly, possibly a bit too slow.

Okay, so it's time for me to do an emergency stop on this podcast.

If you are a podclast, a podclast, if you are a Podcast Plus Member, then

look out for the Bonus Episode, which will Deep Dive into lots more vocabulary

that was covered in this lesson.

Thank you so much to everyone who is listening.

Until next time, take care and goodbye.