General Chat

Speed Awareness course

Yesterday I had to go on a Speed Awareness course as I was a naughty girl in July and exceeded a 30 mph speed limit.

It was really interesting and informative and I learned a lot of safe driving tips during the 4 hr presentation/course. There was lots of interactive stuff with others there, we were sat in groups of three or four and worked together. There were two coffee breaks and coffee before we went in, so I managed to stay awake lol

One point the woman told us about was the way we hold the steering wheel She said most people don't bother with the old ten to two positions or quarter to three because power assisted steering makes it easier, so they just use one hand on the wheel and one hand on the gear stick, or hanging loose.

She told us of a lady on a previous course who had described how her husband had been killed in his car. Airbags when activated have a force of around 400 mph or more and this man had his hand on top of the steering wheel. The air bag forced his hand back into his windpipe so effectively he killed himself. How tragic was that?

I really felt the course was very useful and would be a good idea for new drivers to attend before they get caught for speeding. There were tips on how to slow your car down without braking so you can stay at the right speed and lots of other details that we forget or don't learn updated rules etc.

The course saved me getting points on my licence, never had any before and still don't have any, and you don't have to tell the insurance company so your premium stays the same.

Much better than standing around watching fireworks and getting cold,

Lizx

Liz I had to attend a speed awareness course a couple of years ago. I agree the course is an excellent reminder of good safe driving practices.

I also went on one of those courses a few years back - have to say my experience differed from yours - the guy in charge, in my opinion, was an idiot - a feeling echoed by many of the other participants

When I described how, on my journey to the course along the M4, I was doing 60 mph in the slow lane - a speed I always do on the motorway, I was constantly harassed by lorries trying to make me speed up - the answer I got from the guy in charge was "If you were on my Advanced Driving course, I'd throw you off it - no one on a motorway should do less than 70 mph"

Rubbish in my opinion

My son is on the same course, same place today - I've implored him to keep his cool :-D

A colleague of his did the course and half way through stood up and said "I'd prefer to take the points than sit here any longer listening to a load of rubbish"

So I suppose it all depends on who's taking the course :-)

Never forget that the speed limits are just that - limits not advised speed.

Most of the time in urban areas the safe driving speed is quite a bit less and you can be busted for driving at, say, 30mph, in a busy shopping street when the police reckon 15-20mph a better idea.

In the countryside you can come around a bend and have in front of you a horse or pony ( with/without rider), slow tractor, pedestrians ... best to drive inside the distance you can see.Far too many people don't and pay the price.

The most important reason for having two hands on the wheel is that if something unexpected happens you can maintain control. One handed that is impossible.

SatNav systems should be in line of sight never require people to look down. Quite how this is tolerated I don't know.

More than half of people who go on d/a courses go on to collect more points :-( I personally am against DAC and cautions and would prefer zero tolerance. If they must have DAC then it should go with a 50pmh limit ( and sticker ) on the driver for a year.

But then I had my leg smashed up by a speeding hit and run taxi on a zebra crossing so I am biased. Twenty years later I still have the scars.

I have nul points :-) despite having a very quick motor :-) and have never been on a DAC. AFAIK they are quite pricey.

mine was £80 - I was doing 35 mph on a wide suburban road

Going south out of Brum on the A38 not far from where the Austin used to be the road is wide and dual carriageway. The speed limit is 30/40mph and a lot of people get busted. The reason for the limit is that it is also an accident black spot.

Going into Brighton from Lewes nr the Uni. the road is also wide, dual carriageway and 30/40 mph. Same reason, accident black spot, lots of people get busted. And so on and on ...

Going over the limit also suggest driving without due care and attention - after all there are plenty of signs and all cars have a speedometer. A lot of SatNav systems can be set up to give audible warning when you are exceeding the speed limit.

Break the limit, get busted. Zero sympathy.

The average driver will break the Highway code without realizing or because of circumstances. I find it quite amazing that anyone can honestly say that they have never done so. It is quite easy to creep over the 30mph speed limit as you pull away from traffic lights etc. I know that in the fast car I had when I was working in town I had to drive around in 3rd gear to prevent this happening.

I have never got any points on my licence, probably because I have got away with an occasional burst of speed, or that most of my mileage has been done on country roads & lanes.

These Driver Awareness Courses are only as good as the person running them. Several years ago a family member was over the limit when breathalysed & went on one. He arrived home looking very pale & shocked and has never driven again with ANY alcohol in his system.

AnnC, Lorries are limited to 56mph, they have to be calibrated every 2 years to make sure they are acurate,

There are some exeptions depending on what country the vehicle is from and if the vehicle comes under EU rules

Although lorries are limited to 56mph under EU rules the national speed limit for lorries in the UK is still 60mph

Cars don't have any such requirement and car manufacturers purposly over compansate by making a car speedomiter read a higher speed than the vehicle is traveling to avoid them being blamed by drivers trying to blame the car speedo one example is when i had my car speedo checked and it was showing 40mph on the clock when my actual speed is 37mph so although your speedo may have said you were traveling at 60mph it's a 99.999% certainty that you were actualy traveling at less than 60mph

You should have said to the guy in charge, Well we are not on your Advanced Driving course and 70mph is the speed limit and not a target that has to be hit at any cost

Roy

In our city many of the main intersections with lights have speed cameras on them. The result is that those pulling away from the lights a little bit over the limit get tickets. Just one of the intersections raises over £ 300 K each year !!!

I have a car with top speed 145mph and 0-60 7 secs. It has a lot of torque and can go from 10-100mph all in top gear without any effort.

I go through these intersections all the time, never get any points. It is very funny though to see jazzed up boy racers whizzing past well over the limit unaware of the inevitable ticket.

There is an epidemic of EU citizens who are resident in the UK but still driving on their home country licence and paperwork. They tend to ignore speed limits, parking tickets and so on. IMHO it is about time this was sorted.

The maximum car speedo variation from true speed is regulated by the EU ( 39 ).

For practical purposes
(a) any reading must be at least the actual speed of the vehicle
(b) deviance cannot be more than 4 kph.

Police speedos are specially calibrated and arguing against their in car video is a waste of time especially if the video included some of the road markings painted for speed control. In any case mirror + two large guys in dayglo driving beemer, volvo subaru or whatever should click some sort of warning lol.

I see plenty of coaches and HGVs going well over 60 mph.
The proportion of fatal accidents involving HGVs and particularly foreign plate HGVs should be setting off some bells somewhere I guess.
Half an hour admiring the dents and scrapes at Victoria Coach Station would suggest a safety problem with passenger coaches too.

I have a rellie in the traffic police and he says that utter falure both to look in mirrors and to take on board what you see accounts for lot of accidents and speeding points. Updates in car safety over the last 40 years have utterly failed to take account of driver pyschology.

People spend most of their time driving on the same roads at around the same time again and again. So they see what they expect to see and go as fast as the others i.e. too fast and too close.

Sooner or later something unexpected happens and if they are lucky it is just a bit of a fright ... otherwise not. Boys in blue are also not expected - haven't they got better things to do thqn busting law abiding motorists (sic) ?

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Whilst not condoning speeding I would guess that there are not many drivers who at some time or other have never driven their vehicle faster than the speed limit on the road they were driving on. Most probably escape punishment for their indiscretions whether wilful or accidental.

My only punished speeding indiscretion occurred 40 years ago before the introduction of points on your licence and the totting up procedure. The circumstances sound similar to Ann's. Going downhill on a wide suburban road at 35mph where the speed limit was only 30mph. Result a small fine and an endorsement entered on my licence. The second element of my punishment actually also won me a bottle of wine. Shortly after receiving my endorsement I was at a dinner/dance. A spot prize was offered to the first person with an endorsed licence to reach the MC, that was me.

Like Rollo, I have owned many powerful and fast cars during my lifetime including Jaguar, Morgan and Lotus sports cars. Many is the time that a boy racer has pulled along side me at traffic lights in their Escort RS or similar, gunning their engine and issuing an unspoken challenge. Most of the time I would ignore them but every once in a while I would take their bait. Watching them become smaller and smaller in my Lotus's rear view mirror was somehow quite satisfying.

"they see what they expect to see"

Yep, agree with that and nearly got T-boned as a result!
A junction near us leading to the 'village' has the road from the right bending just before the junction. Consequently turn left indicators can turn themselves off before they get to the turning.

Buses 'always' turn left into the side road....all except a twice a week service to another village which I'd never come across before! Just as well the bus was going fairly sedately as it climbed the hill :-(

Especially for Jonesey and Lotus 7 lovers everywhere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiNDmcSTxDk

my son went to his course yesterday and agrees with me, rubbish

however, there was some hilarity there as one of the people taking the course was a fairly well known [in Wales] Welsh comedian called Owen Money. The course leader asked everyone to switch off their mobiles and then said "When there are celebrities on these courses they do not like to be photographed, so your co-operation will be appreciated"

The boy sitting next to my son asked him "Why is he saying that to us?" My son replied "Because of him - gesturing towards Owen Money"

The boy says to Owen Money "Who are you then mate?" "I'm Owen Money" to which the boy replied "Never heard of you" :-D

Owen Money not well pleased as he is rather up his own!!!

Then fifteen minutes before the course was due to finish s guy put his hand up and asked if he could have a break for a cigarette. Everyone was furious - he was told he could have ten minutes and took fifteen, so he was not a popular man!!

If people were not rubbish drivers with bad attitude then they would not end up on driver awareness courses and would not have to endure obscure Welsh comedians or splash out for the cost of the course.

People are now being sent on these courses for all sorts of stuff where a ticket would be justified esp. careless driving just 'cos it is cheaper for the DPP. How people can feel that they are just fine as drivers after being let off is beyond me.

Bad driving causes injury, accidents and misery. It should be treated as the criminal offence it is with mandatory prison sentences for the guilty party where there is serious injury or death.

An adult pedestrian or cyclist might survive an accident at 20mph, a child probably would not. The chances at 30mph are not so good which is why some cities are bringing in blanket 20pmh limits except for main routes. The chances at 35mph are even worse.

Five miles an hour over a limit which is a maximum. not an average or a target, is not trivial.

I agree Rollo and in forty-five years of driving that was my first offence - never even had a parking ticket

could I also add that a warning would have served the same purpose - I will not reoffend

I think that every driver should have to attend a refresher course that includes speed awareness and hazard perception along with highway code every 5 years to keep their entitlement to drive any motor vehicle

Roy

By and large people who are killed by speeding drivers don't get another go. That the driver had not been caught before is by and by.

The funny thing is that the best speed for getting from A to B as quickly as possible is always less than the speed limit assuming that there are other vehicles on the road. This can be proven using a branch of mathematics called queuing theory.

Try this: drive around your urban area and keep your max speed to 20-25mph. You will have a much smoother drive and save no end on fuel, brakes and tyres. Your journey will not take any longer.

Queuing maths is widely used by traffic engineers oddly enough. It is widely believed that traffic engineers set up their mad schemes including traffic lights, roundabouts and speed limits in order to generate fines income. Not at all their objective is to maximise traffic flow ( not the same thing as speed ) and keep accidents to a minimum.

Having been responsible for more traffic surveys and management schemes than I like to think about I assure you that the only living driver I could believe to have never ever exceeded the speed limit in the UK on a regular basis is HM The Queen.

It is the wild and the reckless who get to feature on Road Wars. It is the "only" 5 to 10mph over the limit "only the once" who do much of the damage.

People and cycists do not have air bags, crush zones and thanks to mobile phones and 24/24 audio and late night clubbing not much attention either. Drivers just need to slow down. A lot.

Roy is correct but the problem as ever is cost - it would be prohibitive. A reasonable compromise would be that anybody who has been disqualified should always face a re-test.

I was driving into Birmingham on the A34 duel carraigway where the speed limit was changed from 40 mph to 30 on one side of the road and remained 40 mph on the other. It was my bad luck to be driving on the day it was changed to 30. Two other people on my course were booked on exactly the same place on the same day.

The facilitator on my course was knowledgable and very professional. During the introduction he explained the course agenda, the aims and objectives and and also emphasised there was no smoking outside of the scheduled coffee/smoking breaks. We had to introduce ourselves, and say how long we had been driving, there was a lot of experienced drivers without any prior speeding convictions. The facilitator said that many people drive over the speed limit some are caught and some are not, this does not necessarily mean those who are not caught are better drivers.

The value of the course depends on the knowledge and attitude of the person delivering the course. I understand that the course content is exactly the same across the country. I have several friends and ex colleagues who have been on these courses they all said they thought they had been beneficial.

These courses are for speeding offences not careless or dangerous driving.

Ann I agree perhaps some course facilitators just need retraining.

" If the pupil hasn't learned then the teaches hasn't taught"

I was driving into Birmingham on the A34 duel carraigway where the speed limit was changed from 40 mph to 30 on one side of the road and remained 40 mph on the other. It was my bad luck to be driving on the day it was changed to 30. Two other people on my course were booked on exactly the same place on the same day.

The facilitator on my course was knowledgable and very professional. During the introduction he explained the course agenda, the aims and objectives and and also emphasised there was no smoking outside of the scheduled coffee/smoking breaks. We had to introduce ourselves, and say how long we had been driving, there was a lot of experienced drivers without any prior speeding convictions. The facilitator said that many people drive over the speed limit some are caught and some are not, this does not necessarily mean those who are not caught are better drivers.

The value of the course depends on the knowledge and attitude of the person delivering the course. I understand that the course content is exactly the same across the country. I have several friends and ex colleagues who have been on these courses they all said they thought they had been beneficial.

These courses are for speeding offences not careless or dangerous driving.

Ann I agree perhaps some course facilitators just need retraining.

" If the pupil hasn't learned then the teaches hasn't taught"