I saw this story in The Blackburn Citizen. Apparently, speed awareness courses – these are where people who have been caught speeding can avoid points on their licences by attending the course – no longer involve a driving element. It’s now all classroom based.
I love the part where they say it is to “cut costs and improve results”.
How will it improve results? The article doesn’t actually say, so you have to do a little bit of surmising and reading between the lines.
According to the council, research by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is set to be released which suggests that motorists are not benefiting enough from the [practical] driving lessons to justify the cost and time.
It’s hard to see how a practical element – delivered properly, of course – would be of less value than a theoretical element. It’s even harder to see how a purely theoretical approach is, in any shape or form, going to get the message across that speeding is wrong if people don’t already know it (which they do, of course).
On[e] 52-year-old from Chorley, who was caught doing 37mph in a 30mph zone, said he was disappointed not to do the driving on a recent course…
…“But I had been looking forward to the practical element…”
I’ll just point out that if he was “caught doing 37mph” then his speedo would have been showing something closer to 45mph. So rather than being booked on to a speed awareness course he should have been undergoing medical tests to confirm that he wasn’t too stupid to possess a driving licence. He could easily book refresher lessons in his own time if he genuinely acknowledges he is a bad driver, and wasn’t just trying to avoid points (possibly taking him over the limit, of course. The article doesn’t go into that kind of detail) on his licence.
Then there are the inevitable comments to the online story. One, from Chris P Bacon, of Colne, writes:
Anyone stupid enough to pay good money to be dictated to by a load of no-marks wanting to throw around their (non-existent) weight needs to be pitied. If you are foolish enough to infringe a minor driving regulation and even more foolish to get caught, cough the fine and take the points.
This is proof that speed awareness courses don’t work. People with this sort of idiotic attitude are never going to learn. Chris P Bacon obviously thinks that doing 45mph (on your speedo) when it is a 30mph zone is a “minor” issue. Then there is another one from bacupbabe, of Bacup:
I would imagine that all the driving instructors who were employed to do the driving part of the course are now down at the dole. I think dropping the driving part of the course was a good idea. I went on one of these courses to avoid the points. I found the theory part of the test very helpful but the patronising preaching from the driving instructor got on my nerves.
See what I mean? They shouldn’t have licences, and the police are nuts to think that these wishy-washy courses are going to change people who have the intellects of grass.
But going back to the ACPO statement that the practical element wasn’t having any benefits, there is another comment from someone right at the bottom in reply to bacupbabe. It says:
It was suggested, when this scheme first came in, that competent instructors were difficult to find and only those who couldn’t hack it were taken on.
I suspect that this one may be much closer to the mark, because it dovetails with what ACPO has said.