The last few years witnessed the mushrooming of speed bumps, originally constructed from concrete and/or tarmac, and more recently from rubber which is bolted on to the road.

Such bumps slow traffic down to almost a standstill. It appears that these bumps were designed for use in car parks and not on roads.

In my experience driving in the UK and continental Europe, I never came across such bumps on roads. What I came across however are speed humps, which slow down traffic to around 30kph. I looked up web sites and what I learnt conformed to my experience: "While similar to speed bumps, humps are less aggressive than speed bumps and are used on actual streets as opposed to bumps which are primarily placed in parking lots.

While speed bumps generally slow cars to 5-10 mph (8-15 km/h), humps slow cars to 10-20 mph (15-30 km/h)." (Wikipedia - note that this conforms to guidelines issued by the Transport Authority UK, whose website I did consult).

Speed humps are around three to four metres in length, while speed bumps are around 30 cm long. Besides slowing down traffic to 10 kph unnecessarily, bumps contribute to increased pollution and suspension/steering damage. Worse still, bumps slow response time of emergency vehicles. Speed bumps should be restricted to parking spaces and all bumps on our roads should be replaced with properly constructed humps that are fit for the purpose.