This week I received a reminder that my driving is not always up to the standard I set myself, in the context of the road code and the various speed limits along the various roads I traverse on a normal day. I was fined €35 for speeding. I crossed a 60 km/h limit coming out of a tunnel, hitting 68 km/h.

I shall pay the fine with more than good grace. I feel indebted to the speed camera that caught me out. The recorded lapse will, I hope, make me focus more when I'm driving and keep my mind from wandering towards the various personal mental files that, like everybody else's, call for unremitting attention.

It is very easy to get distracted towards mere thoughts, let alone not to look regularly at the speedometer. To stay within the speed limit is a duty one owes to other drivers, to pedestrians, and to ourselves and the passengers who may be riding with us.

That is why I invariably find myself at odds with those who complain about speed cameras, as if they were some device set up by the government, local councils or the company that runs them to trap us. Speed limits exist all over the place, in far more roads and streets than are covered by speed cameras. They are regularly broken, at risk to all concerned.

They are, in fact, broken with considerable impunity. I live in Attard on a street which sees its fair share of thoroughfare, but is not a main road. Nevertheless, because it has two or three straight stretches of about 200 metres each, there are regular users of it who indulge in incredible speeding. A number of them tend to do it at the same time of day.

I am not aware that the local council, which is one of the more industrious on the island, has any plans to install speed cameras. At least it should draw up and implement a traffic-calming plan. Yet not even that seems on the cards, one reason being that one or two residents complained when a sleeping policeman was set up on a trial basis at a key one-way part where speeding tends to start.

But that's in the personal box. In the wide wide world out there on our little islands, speeding takes place regularly. Thank God, it does not result in too many grave traffic accidents. But it is a danger to life and limb.

That notwithstanding, the government is now considering a proposal to raise the 60 km/h speed limit where it applies to 80 km/h. I find that a reckless waste of time. Speed limits are set according to the type of road or street, the volume of traffic that passes through it, the average number of pedestrians who use it, and other similar parameters.

There are speed limits that need reviewing and revising, certainly, but not the 60 km/h, except on some very uphill roads. One has to wait and see whether the authorities will pander to those who rabidly object to speed cameras, meaning they do not want accountability for their actions when they err, as I did.

While I see speed cameras as a positive mechanism, I feel the warden system remains very largely misused. Wardens continue to go for easy pickings. What, however, is the supervisory system doing at least to minimise the emissions that still come from so many types of vehicles on the road, including but not limited to buses and trucks?

My work and family responsibilities involve me in quite a bit of driving each day bar Sunday. I have yet to come across a warden, or a police officer for that matter, stopping a vehicle belching smoke and having a word with its driver.

The system still has in place the means whereby those who wish to see emissions controlled can act as spies and do the official job for the authorities by reporting emitters. That is in far more need of review than speed limits, and not just because we are falling foul of EU directives.

Responsibility begins at home. Emissions should be cut for our sakes, not merely to acquiesce to EU regulations.

Similarly with road markings, the absence of which I tackled in last week's column. Road signing is not perfect, but at least most road signs are perfectly visible and well located. But road markings are in a terrible state. They only last for a few months after they are painted anew, in new or reconstructed roads, or over old faded ones.

Various foreign visitors have complained to me, and no doubt to others as well, about the terrible state of these markings. It is an old complaint. But the authorities show amazing indifference to it. It is one area of public expenditure which is neither efficient, nor effective. Taxpayers and visitors alike are getting bad value for the revenue they pass to the government.

Is anybody at Transport Malta listening? Or will they only perk up when some bad accident occurs because of lamentable road markings and they are sued for sheer and persistent negligence?