Today I had to get up at 4am, left the house at 5am and drove to Wales for a 9am appointment on a "Speed Awareness Course". It was either this or have 3 points on my license and have to cough up extra on my insurance for the next 5 years. The course lasted three hours and had 15 people on it, all bar 2 of which were from the local area. I was annoyed that I'd had to drive all the way from Derbyshire yet there were people there from Essex, the North East and even Scotland - so I wasn't the worse off.
The course lasted 3 hours and was all about the dangers of speed, how driving at 30mph was the equivalent of 44 feet per second, stopping distances and generally how utterly bad and incompetant we were at driving. Everyone in the room had been caught not by fixed camera but by North Wales Police "Arrive Alive Vans" which get parked at (and I quote) 'accident blackspots' or where 'the public asks them to be placed'. In reality this means anywhere they can maximise their chances of catching people, i.e. on roads where they've lowered the speed limit without warning (it's happened in Bangor), as you exit the slow moving Menai Bridge and speed up on the open road or, as with happened with us, hiding around a bend after a long clear stretch of road.
We were told the course wasn't a debating chamber; that we weren't allowed to air our grievences about the system and we certainly couldn't discuss relevant issues such as why the Police aren't concentrating on catching criminals instead of persecuting drivers. Anyway, I digress. We did get caught for doing 35 in a 30 (around the same as most in the room) and to go on the course to avoid the points we had to admit our guilt. If only it was this easy to prosecute anti-social behaviour / robbery or violent crime eh
We did learn some good things about what we can do to read the road better and how to recognise some of the things that might make you creep over the speed limit. So it wasn't all doom & gloom. I think most of us took three things away from the course:
1. Slow down.
2. Take care.
3. Don't go on holiday to North Wales again where the Traffic Taleban are out to make as much as possible from easily targetable drivers.
OK, the last point may be flippant but seeing as all bar 2 of us were on holiday, attending the course costs £60 each, there are 4 courses in the building a day and there are 15 people a course. That's a cool £3,600 a day "easy money" for the Police / Council / Government to rake in - and that's just from those lucky enough (and I class myself "lucky" that I don't have to have the 3 points) let alone all those that automatically got the fine & points. So even though Wales is a beautiful country and we've had some nice holidays there, we won't be going back as it's not worth the risk of being zapped again.
Finally, it really made me think about the journey home. I think I was paying more attention to the road and to my speed, however it did make me look at my speedometer more often. Whether that's a good / bad thing I don't know. I just hope that I don't break the speed limit and I certainly don't want to be the cause of an accident.
The course lasted 3 hours and was all about the dangers of speed, how driving at 30mph was the equivalent of 44 feet per second, stopping distances and generally how utterly bad and incompetant we were at driving. Everyone in the room had been caught not by fixed camera but by North Wales Police "Arrive Alive Vans" which get parked at (and I quote) 'accident blackspots' or where 'the public asks them to be placed'. In reality this means anywhere they can maximise their chances of catching people, i.e. on roads where they've lowered the speed limit without warning (it's happened in Bangor), as you exit the slow moving Menai Bridge and speed up on the open road or, as with happened with us, hiding around a bend after a long clear stretch of road.
We were told the course wasn't a debating chamber; that we weren't allowed to air our grievences about the system and we certainly couldn't discuss relevant issues such as why the Police aren't concentrating on catching criminals instead of persecuting drivers. Anyway, I digress. We did get caught for doing 35 in a 30 (around the same as most in the room) and to go on the course to avoid the points we had to admit our guilt. If only it was this easy to prosecute anti-social behaviour / robbery or violent crime eh
We did learn some good things about what we can do to read the road better and how to recognise some of the things that might make you creep over the speed limit. So it wasn't all doom & gloom. I think most of us took three things away from the course:
1. Slow down.
2. Take care.
3. Don't go on holiday to North Wales again where the Traffic Taleban are out to make as much as possible from easily targetable drivers.
OK, the last point may be flippant but seeing as all bar 2 of us were on holiday, attending the course costs £60 each, there are 4 courses in the building a day and there are 15 people a course. That's a cool £3,600 a day "easy money" for the Police / Council / Government to rake in - and that's just from those lucky enough (and I class myself "lucky" that I don't have to have the 3 points) let alone all those that automatically got the fine & points. So even though Wales is a beautiful country and we've had some nice holidays there, we won't be going back as it's not worth the risk of being zapped again.
Finally, it really made me think about the journey home. I think I was paying more attention to the road and to my speed, however it did make me look at my speedometer more often. Whether that's a good / bad thing I don't know. I just hope that I don't break the speed limit and I certainly don't want to be the cause of an accident.
fortunatly i was able to go to leicester,there were people there from scotland as well.
