Speed awareness shenanigans

[miniman]

Typically as I am currently driving the slowest car I've ever owned, I picked up a nice ticket for 34 in a 30 heading into Cardiff, and was offered the speed awareness course. Obviously I was sceptical as to the value of this, but thought I'd give it a go. The ex-traffic plod chap giving the course was great actually; nice guy, honest, realistic. The scary bit was how little some of the other "delegates" knew about the rules, cars, physics and so forth.

• Many people had no idea what the correlation between lampposts and speed limits was
• Many had no idea what constitutes a dual carriageway
• One mid-20s girl wearing a mix of Barbour, Joules and Hackett was blatantly fetching horses around with a Range Rover with no idea that she wasn't supposed to
• Question: "would you recommend switching off traction control? Would that be safer?"
• Half the room had no idea that there were different length and spaced road markings
• No-one had heard of "SMIDSY"
• No-one had heard of the two-second rule
• No-one had a clue that you have to drive slower when towing
• Half the room couldn't draw a Give Way sign
• Several couldn't identify a NSL sign

The majority of the course wasn't about speed, it was about driving adequately, which is admirable. As a mechanism to nab bad drivers and educate them a bit, it was actually ok. Shame that the basic level of driver education is so low to start with though.

[miniman]

HTP99 said:

The girl fetching horses with a Range Rover; haven't a clue what you mean?!

Had passed her test after 1997, and was unaware that this meant that there were restrictions as to what she could tow. I'm reinforcing stereotypes terribly here, but her demeanour and dress suggested that she was perhaps regularly towing a horsebox.

[miniman]

Sheepshanks said:

ilduce said:

My brother went on one a few months ago. He said the craziest thing was when, before starting the course, the trainer asked if anyone present wasn't actually the person who was driving at the time of the offence, and if so they should leave the room and not do the course. FIVE people got up and left!

I take what you've written at face value, but I've never heard of anything like that before - why would people get to that point, and then "confess" when a general question was asked?

On my course, the instructor was very clear that if anyone was attending on behalf of the real driver, THEY would be committing an offence and then took us through the Chris Huhne / Vicky Price case (which is arguably rather different, but has the added bonus of jail time in the mix).

[miniman]

4 hours!

[miniman]

HereBeMonsters said:

It actually took an ex-Army driver, me, and the two traffic-plod running the course to persuade them that it was the wrong thing to do.

I've got a mental image of the four of you holding them down for a damn good kicking, but sadly I doubt it happened like that