Anyone been on a speed awareness course?

[HelloDenise]

What can I expect?

Interesting
We had to do a small group activity
about road signs and rights of way

Nothing onerous
and there was tea and biscuits

At the beginning They asked everyone individually why they were there
Amazing how many people said they were 1mph over the speed limit 🤣

Yes . It was very boring .

Clearly by the number of people who have done 2 or 3 of them. Not very effective!

Not personally but I have known several people who have. Each said they learned information they’d not known before. To the extent that I wonder if it should be a requirement when learning to drive. But they all had people on the course who knew it all and were a bit of a pain

Did one online . The course leader was very much I don't want to hear how you were caught speeding, if you argue with what I'm saying and don't take notes and don't focus enthusiastically on the course I will fail you.

So we had to take notes and show our notes at the end!

I found mine really interesting and useful
it’s many years since my driving test, a refresh on Highway Code etc was eye opening, I was shocked by how much I didn’t know

Even speed awareness now a MN opportunity to hate men 😂🤔
mine was mostly men, 2 of whom drove vans and used them for work

no silly girls who had been shopping

So not exactly effective since you're still speeding (and still being caught).

Maybe they should just fine repeat offenders.

I did one - it was pretty interesting as the 2 guys doing it were chatty with good stories. If you participate the time goes quickly and you do learn some interesting stuff.

@Arlanymor

I feel your pain - 23mph at 6am in a 20mph, that used to be a 30mph and has subsequently been restored to a 20mph!

That is just ridiculous. 23mph is barely moving and it's not speeding in any real sense. It is the kind of variable that might happen naturally in any car that has gears just by the nature of moving and human control.

What idiocy to issue a ticket for that and to make someone do a speed awareness course. There is literally nothing you could "teach" someone doing 23mph in a 20mph zone because there is nothing there that is culpable. People speeding way over the limit because they are in a hurry or not paying attention to the speed limit or ignoring it - is different situation because they could learn something that might help in future but 23mph is ridiculous.

Although the payment of fines and course money I suppose covers it, this is an absolute waste of publicly funded time and resources. I'd rather the time of police wasted in lecturing people who are not going to learn anything because they have so little culpability was spent dealing with actual crime like home burglary where they no don't event send officers to look and its just logged as a statistic (happened to a friend).

I did mine quite a few years ago in person

The course was a mix of slides & hazard awareness videos, but more of it was table and full group discussions

We made a basic introduction with the option of telling our story of getting caught

One was a retired traffic police officer, calling it a
waste of time, but then contributing a lot for his work history dealing with incidents
A teen who was angriest with herself as
a cautious driver but failed to slow in temporary works with morning sunshine glare
A mother embarrassed because her young child always said to slow down and had been proven to be correct
What initially looked to be the boy racer, but he drove two similar models of estate car and estate style van. He was within the car speed limit on a dual carriageway, but had just began work in the van with the lower limit

The excitement of the day was coffee & pastries as it was a catered hotel function room

There was another course running next door and as we were leaving someone from the other course wheelspun a sports car through the gravel car park

For what it's worth I was involved in some research when the courses were first piloted and they were proved to be effective at changing people's behaviour (compared to getting points), which is why they still exist!

Mine was online. They sent a workbook/notebook thing in advance and you had to show that you’d made notes/reflections. There was one girl so obviously working on another screen/work for the whole 3 hours I don’t know how she wasn’t called out on it.

It was interesting and better than points. The facilitator thought he was a comedian which was a bit irritating.

Also done them twice although now quite a long time ago.

The first I did around 10yrs ago and was in person and focused on speed limits. I was caught doing 40 in a 30 (no excuses, I learned my lesson - the course did help).

The second I was caught doing 56 in a 50 limit on a smart motorway (my "excuse" being that I didn't hard break as I went under the gantry advertising the change to 50 so had only slowed down to 56 rather than the full 50 as I went under and the camera got me). That was peak covid times and I then did an online course - but it was all focused on smart motorways and motorway driving. So a totally different "syllabus".

It's all now sounding rather interesting!

You might change your mind if your child was killed by a 23 mph car. There's a hugely bigger chance of fatality at 30mph compared to 20. So at 23 the risk is a lot more than at 20.

This will be because those type of offences are more serious and so will not be disposed of via a course.

Pretty dull, but basically fine. It’s not a strict test, but you do have to demonstrate you’ve been paying attention- so need to have your camera on, can’t be eg watching TV in the background (someone got thrown out of mine for doing this).

You’ll be shown pics and vids and asked questions, make sure you contribute as they’ll want to see this to pass you. Easiest thing to do is to be the first to interact when the group is asked about the eg video, if you put off saying anything all the obvious observations will have already been taken!

It is common knowledge most road accidents are caused by young male drivers.

Some instructors make it interesting, some don’t.

I am sure, I was just surprised as usually in our town it is men who noticeably drive unsafely and at speed so I raised an eyebrow at the demographic in my group, but I realise that it was just one group. I did wonder if they were given points immediately because they were probably all doing way over the limits on camera.

I did an in person one about 10 or so years ago and an online one a few weeks ago. The in person one was better as there were two instructors running it together and they were very affable and aware that none of us truly wanted to be there!

The online one was fine though. As others have said, you do need to prove you're paying attention. One woman was kicked off before we'd even started as she admitted she didn't have a pen for making notes.

There were several sections to the course:
One about knowing the limits
One about why the limits exist
And one about controlling emotions and how to stay under the limits.

I'm not mad keen to do another one but there were a lot of surprising facts and figures in there which made it more than tolerable.

Thing to be aware of- no one else in the room with you, including a dog. Mine was unimpressed.

I'm going to do an in person one.

I wasn't thrilled to be fair - I've been driving 30 years with never a ticket for anything - parking, speeding, nothing! And it was bloody downhill! That's £96 I will never see again - still at least my licence remains clean I guess.