speed awareness course
Discussion
OK, at the risk of further random abuse, I thought I should give my impressions of my speed awareness course. Apols for the lengthy post.
On the plus side, we were treated to copious tea and free biscuits and the venue (a room inside the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton - leading to the fantastic toilet direction: "walk past the two helicopters then turn right by the torpedo") was fine.
I was surprised by the size of the group - 24 - which had pros and cons as I'll come on to. I was imagining we'd be about a dozen or less, round one table.
The trainers were a jolly fat man and a serious gaunt woman. They were very obviously good and bad cop, to a comical degree.
The group were almost all 30-60, with just a couple younger and maybe two-three OAPs. Sadly a complete lack of good looking women, which I'd been relying on as something to look at to pass the time. Though there was one of my near neighbours and someone I know through work which was quite freaky.
I spoke to the latter in a break and she said she'd been mortified when caught, until she mentioned it at work and found out how many people had been on one. This came up in a couple of chats in breaks I had. Rather than stigmatising speeding, the sheer number of people caught seemed to be normalising it entirely.
I asked one of the trainers in a break whether we were an average demographic and he said yes. I took the opportunity to ask - given that young people were statistically the most dangerous drivers - why there weren't more youngsters on the courses. He didn't know.
We sat on four tables, and having chatted for a few minutes before going in we seemed to self select into naughty table (me), serious table, nice middle aged lady table and young men table. My table seemed to find the whole thing funny - the ability to make jokes and not take the whole thing seriously was I think aided by the size of the group. Being a room of 24 people was like being in a school class. Certainly some people were able to pass the whole afternoon in silence - the table of younger blokes didn't seem to even bother doing the group exercises. But it also enabled a few characters to entertain me.
In particular a posh guy called Charles on my table was an absolute riot - he had one of those rubbery faces, and the spectrum from astonishment to disdain on his face as the afternoon went on was a picture.
There was a surprising ability in the attendees to dissociate the trainers from the fact they had been caught for speeding - one or two people had a moan about the manner in which they'd been caught but they didn't seem to direct this at the trainers.
The course seemed to be dominated by attempts to educate the class on how to tell what the speed limit was on a road. This seemed to be aiming quite low in terms of education, but this level seemed to be justified. I would say most of the class seemed to have great difficulties with this, and once we got on to limits for different types of vehicles they didn't have a clue. One rather mad woman on my table had a camper van and had no idea what the speed limit was for it. No one knew small non-car-derived vans had to do 10mph less than cars. I asked a puckish question about how to tell if my van had a car chassis, was told to look at my V5. I replied that as a employee I'd never seen it and was rather rapidly brushed off.
About the only bit that seemed to have any impact on the group was the stuff about stopping distances. I'd decided to keep quiet as much as I could (not easy!) but interject when I thought it would have some effect. My chosen moment was when "bad cop" said the stopping distance of the "average car" from 70mph was 315 feet. I asked her when this figure was arrived at, she waffled, so I said "you and I know that it's based on a car from the 60s". She replied that it was meant to represent the average car, to which I replied that the fact that it didn't smacked of scaremongering. We were moved on...
There was an attempt to show us how going faster didn't get you there any quicker and that it made you more tired and stressed. The whole room looked at each other in bafflement at this, and one or two of us gave examples of journeys we'd done a lot quicker by going fast. So "bad cop" moved us on again...
Other than speed limits there was a bit on general hazard perception (including COAST), which produced the gem that only two of us knew what shape give way and stop signs were. The group groped toward the idea the stop signs were multi-sided, going through pentagon and hexagon, then Posh Charles shouted "dodecahedron" and our table dissolved in to laughter.
For about two minutes there was a discussion on how to pass horse riders and cyclists, which rapidly dissolved into a group rant about cyclists riding 2+ abreast, so we were moved on.
We got shown a couple of safety films, including the TV ad where the bloke keeps seeing a child's body wherever he goes. Afterwards "bad cop" said "that film doesn't get any less shocking even when you watch it twice a day, at which point a very Caaancil woman on my table stage-whispered "Yeah, that dead kid was really ginger". Cue hysterics from our table again.
The tone in general and the summary in particular was bizarre - the trainers just seemed to have such low expectations of us. By the time four hours was up most people were pretty subdued - in fact I think the length of the course counted against it. Two punchy hours would have had more impact. In fact one of the trainers more or less made clear the length had a punitive element to it.
But the summary was more or less telling us that no one expected us to manage to obey the speed limit all the time (Posh Charles: "don't the police?", more laughter) but at least we could have a try. As the group was leaving, one man got a last question in about why the course was so heavily focused on adherence to 30 limits when most of the others he'd spoken to had been caught on fast A-roads. The answer as far as I heard it was along the lines of "we just run the course, the police catch you", but I thought it was a fair point about enforcement targetting, if not the course.
Then we all left. On the way home (I listened to Judas Priest's 'Breaking the Law' by design and overtook two cars in short order on a B-road
) I came across a Corsa on its roof having clipped a bank. True to form the driver was a young lad. Said it all really.
Actually what said it all was my OH's surprise at my chirpy mood on getting home. She expected me to be in a bad mood, or at the very least grumpy. I attributed this to the fact that it seemed to wash over me a bit, so much of it was aimed at people who don't even know what roadsigns mean.
To be honest it was a bit like attending one of those workplace refresher courses that enable you to keep using something you've been using for years. You know you've got to do it, you don't particularly want to, but you just play along and get off home asap and forget about it for another three years.
On the plus side, we were treated to copious tea and free biscuits and the venue (a room inside the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton - leading to the fantastic toilet direction: "walk past the two helicopters then turn right by the torpedo") was fine.
I was surprised by the size of the group - 24 - which had pros and cons as I'll come on to. I was imagining we'd be about a dozen or less, round one table.
The trainers were a jolly fat man and a serious gaunt woman. They were very obviously good and bad cop, to a comical degree.
The group were almost all 30-60, with just a couple younger and maybe two-three OAPs. Sadly a complete lack of good looking women, which I'd been relying on as something to look at to pass the time. Though there was one of my near neighbours and someone I know through work which was quite freaky.
I spoke to the latter in a break and she said she'd been mortified when caught, until she mentioned it at work and found out how many people had been on one. This came up in a couple of chats in breaks I had. Rather than stigmatising speeding, the sheer number of people caught seemed to be normalising it entirely.
I asked one of the trainers in a break whether we were an average demographic and he said yes. I took the opportunity to ask - given that young people were statistically the most dangerous drivers - why there weren't more youngsters on the courses. He didn't know.
We sat on four tables, and having chatted for a few minutes before going in we seemed to self select into naughty table (me), serious table, nice middle aged lady table and young men table. My table seemed to find the whole thing funny - the ability to make jokes and not take the whole thing seriously was I think aided by the size of the group. Being a room of 24 people was like being in a school class. Certainly some people were able to pass the whole afternoon in silence - the table of younger blokes didn't seem to even bother doing the group exercises. But it also enabled a few characters to entertain me.
In particular a posh guy called Charles on my table was an absolute riot - he had one of those rubbery faces, and the spectrum from astonishment to disdain on his face as the afternoon went on was a picture.
There was a surprising ability in the attendees to dissociate the trainers from the fact they had been caught for speeding - one or two people had a moan about the manner in which they'd been caught but they didn't seem to direct this at the trainers.
The course seemed to be dominated by attempts to educate the class on how to tell what the speed limit was on a road. This seemed to be aiming quite low in terms of education, but this level seemed to be justified. I would say most of the class seemed to have great difficulties with this, and once we got on to limits for different types of vehicles they didn't have a clue. One rather mad woman on my table had a camper van and had no idea what the speed limit was for it. No one knew small non-car-derived vans had to do 10mph less than cars. I asked a puckish question about how to tell if my van had a car chassis, was told to look at my V5. I replied that as a employee I'd never seen it and was rather rapidly brushed off.
About the only bit that seemed to have any impact on the group was the stuff about stopping distances. I'd decided to keep quiet as much as I could (not easy!) but interject when I thought it would have some effect. My chosen moment was when "bad cop" said the stopping distance of the "average car" from 70mph was 315 feet. I asked her when this figure was arrived at, she waffled, so I said "you and I know that it's based on a car from the 60s". She replied that it was meant to represent the average car, to which I replied that the fact that it didn't smacked of scaremongering. We were moved on...
There was an attempt to show us how going faster didn't get you there any quicker and that it made you more tired and stressed. The whole room looked at each other in bafflement at this, and one or two of us gave examples of journeys we'd done a lot quicker by going fast. So "bad cop" moved us on again...
Other than speed limits there was a bit on general hazard perception (including COAST), which produced the gem that only two of us knew what shape give way and stop signs were. The group groped toward the idea the stop signs were multi-sided, going through pentagon and hexagon, then Posh Charles shouted "dodecahedron" and our table dissolved in to laughter.
For about two minutes there was a discussion on how to pass horse riders and cyclists, which rapidly dissolved into a group rant about cyclists riding 2+ abreast, so we were moved on.
We got shown a couple of safety films, including the TV ad where the bloke keeps seeing a child's body wherever he goes. Afterwards "bad cop" said "that film doesn't get any less shocking even when you watch it twice a day, at which point a very Caaancil woman on my table stage-whispered "Yeah, that dead kid was really ginger". Cue hysterics from our table again.
The tone in general and the summary in particular was bizarre - the trainers just seemed to have such low expectations of us. By the time four hours was up most people were pretty subdued - in fact I think the length of the course counted against it. Two punchy hours would have had more impact. In fact one of the trainers more or less made clear the length had a punitive element to it.
But the summary was more or less telling us that no one expected us to manage to obey the speed limit all the time (Posh Charles: "don't the police?", more laughter) but at least we could have a try. As the group was leaving, one man got a last question in about why the course was so heavily focused on adherence to 30 limits when most of the others he'd spoken to had been caught on fast A-roads. The answer as far as I heard it was along the lines of "we just run the course, the police catch you", but I thought it was a fair point about enforcement targetting, if not the course.
Then we all left. On the way home (I listened to Judas Priest's 'Breaking the Law' by design and overtook two cars in short order on a B-road
) I came across a Corsa on its roof having clipped a bank. True to form the driver was a young lad. Said it all really. Actually what said it all was my OH's surprise at my chirpy mood on getting home. She expected me to be in a bad mood, or at the very least grumpy. I attributed this to the fact that it seemed to wash over me a bit, so much of it was aimed at people who don't even know what roadsigns mean.
To be honest it was a bit like attending one of those workplace refresher courses that enable you to keep using something you've been using for years. You know you've got to do it, you don't particularly want to, but you just play along and get off home asap and forget about it for another three years.
Johnnytheboy said:
I took the opportunity to ask - given that young people were statistically the most dangerous drivers - why there weren't more youngsters on the courses. He didn't know.
Because SAC attendees are by definition caught at a modest figure above the limit(s). And the stereotypical young driver is more likely to be caught doing a speed too excessive to be offered the SAC option.EskimoArapaho said:
Johnnytheboy said:
I took the opportunity to ask - given that young people were statistically the most dangerous drivers - why there weren't more youngsters on the courses. He didn't know.
Because SAC attendees are by definition caught at a modest figure above the limit(s). And the stereotypical young driver is more likely to be caught doing a speed too excessive to be offered the SAC option.One guy there was 1mph away from a ban apparently. They seem to be pretty happy to give these courses out to anyone.
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