General Chat

I have to say I find some of these replies very pompous!

The course I was on is called the National Speed Awareness Course. Some apparently are run by private companies but this one is done through our local County Counci Environment, Transport and Development Dept.

One of the women 'teaching' us is a part time Sugarbeet lorry driver and fits in her work with the courses round the driving work. I was not the only person who was pleased with the way the two woman acted towards us, and felt the course was worth doing without patronising us.

The road I was on when I went over the limit was at the time completely empty of other traffic and it was daylight, dry conditions and has large houses on one side with longish driveways and a College that was closed for the summer, on the other side. It leads from the Ipswich road into Norwich city centre, just within the ring road. I had total vision ahead of me and around me. I was caught driving at 36mph when it should have been 30 or less. I made a mistake, one that happens to all drivers, I will not believe that no one goes over the limit even by a small amount at some time in their driving history. I am usually very aware of speed limits and everyone who travels with me says they think I am a good and safe driver.

The course cost £84 so I don't see how it cuts down cost of prosecution etc, if I had accepted the fine and points it would have cost me £60.

Liz

I have ameliorated my driving speeds over the last few years........and a lot of what Rollo /Roy say I agree with,

however if a driver /vehicle is not capable of maintaining the speed limit( no matter what road) then I think that they shouldn't be on it.

my latest grievance, is underpowered powered bicycles (in my mind they don't qualify as a real motor bike.!)
yes I know its current legislation to progress up the power/speed range, but
it appears that they are taught that the section of road is theirs, and to ride in the middle of the lane, thus preventing anyone else from over-taking safely.

in MY day as a motorcyclist.I was taught to allow other road users to overtake, by not hogging the road.

Bob

Yes, of course I have. So has pretty well anybody who drives.
As a young guy I had one of the fabled Mini Cooper S which helped me to being disq. 6 months for speeding - so I spent the money saved on beer :-)

After learning that waiting at wet n windy bus stops and long late walks home is not my thing I didn't get any more tickets in the UK. I did get fined $ 100 in California driving on the Big Sur at around 70mph.

In France nothing except lots of "papillons" ( parking tiockets ). Not even a scraped fender despite driving around Paris nearly every day. French plate car.

Over the last 5 years since I came back to the UK no, I have not exceeded the speed limit. There is no point in it as the roads are so bad that driving in a hurry won't get you there any faster. I do use car's performance to safely overtake trucks, caravans etc but no need to break speed limits. It is ez enough to fit a gadget which warns of the current speed limit.

Since a near death experience on a zebra crossing hit by a speeding taxi I have had quite strong feelings about urban speeding. Portsmouth with its 20mph limit is the way to go. The never ending carnage in the New Forest has made me feel much the same about rural speeding.

As Porky-Pie says the art of driving is concentration and hazard anticipation plus smoothness. Pay attention to all that and the mirrors and you should not find yourself breaking the speed limit anyway.

Driving 5mph over 30/40mph limits is not only careless but dangerous too, mainly for pedestrians and cyclists.

Very fast driving is great fun, just that the public highway is not the place.

there you go, enjoy your ride

can I ask Rollo - have you ever exceeded the speed limit?

Sure ... but the difference is semantic.

In any case I don't think any of these courses are a good idea.
The main idea is to cut down prosecution costs and police time.
Cheap justice for some.

I understand Rollo I was referring to the speeding awareness course.

Driver awareness courses are being used for careless driving cases. Here is a recent one which hit the headlines:

http://road.cc/content/news/76242-driver-awareness-course-motorist-who-knocked-bradley-wiggins-his-bike

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"

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 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

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

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.

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!!

Especially for Jonesey and Lotus 7 lovers everywhere.

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

"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 :-(

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.

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) ?

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.

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