On April Fool"s Day...

On April Fool"s Day, the "Head of Mandate Avoidance", Dr Hans Uphoo-Gotit, revealed measures to combat imminent roadside cameras designed to catch drivers going too slowly. I could barely manage a smile, never mind a chuckle. It just wasn"t funny. While the Bavarian company has its strong points, comedy isn"t one of them.

But this is an extremely clever firm that"s often ahead of the game. The woman who effectively owns Germany"s best and most highly respected auto maker has surrounded herself with committed car and bike guys who are passionate about driving and riding, and comprehending the real dangers of travelling too fast... or not quickly enough. When it mischievously announced on 1 April: "Police chiefs have warned that slow driving has become nearly as great a hazard as speeding on Britain"s roads today," rather than making a joke, it was accurately predicting the future. I hope.

Some US states are spot-on when they tell drivers how quickly and, equally importantly, how slowly they"re permitted to go. The signs are brilliantly simple and easy to understand: the top line typically reads "MAX 65MPH" and the bottom one, "MIN 50MPH". We urgently need the same sort of no-nonsense approach in Britain. And BMW might just have started the long-overdue debate with its spoof press release.

It"s like this. Inappropriately slow vehicles are responsible for far too many accidents. How often have you seen a car inviting carnage by crawling along a motorway slip road at 30mph then joining lane one at 35? Or a truck that expects every other vehicle to scatter as it leaps from lane one to lane two at a little more than 50mph while nearby cars, vans and bikes are travelling about 50 per cent faster?

Motorists trying to extract maximum fuel economy by doing around 50mph on a free-flowing but busy motorway also have the potential to create accidents, especially when they hog lane two. Then there are the milk floats, mobile cranes, JCBs, tractors, street cleaners and countless other underpowered or knackered vehicles whose velocity is dangerously incompatible with most other machines on the road. Do keep reminding yourself that the Government"s lazy and fatuous Speed Kills message is flawed: inappropriately fast or slow speeds are the real problem.

As it"s a highly responsible, cash-rich company - and creator of the slow-speed-obsessed Dr Hans Uphoo-Gotit - I"ve taken the liberty of writing to BMW, requesting that it helps fund some serious research and further debate into the cause and effect of vehicles travelling at dangerously incompatible speeds. If I get a response, whether it"s funny, serious or somewhere in between, I"ll share it with you.