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Thames Valley Speed Awareness course
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This came up in another thread, but I thought if I was going to type
it up, I'd start a new thread. I attended one of these courses this
week, after triggering a camera at 36 in a 30 - something I was very
annoyed about (see explanation below).
Anyway, here's a quick description of the afternoon. It started at
3pm, with dire warnings that if late you'd not be allowed in, and
forfeit the £72 fee, so everyone is early. We all sit in a waiting
room, being very english and not talking to each other. A complete
cross-section of people - here was as good a slice of middle England
as you'll find.
We're led into a class room with an individual screen and mouse on
each desk. After the intros, where the loos are, what to do if the
fire alarm sounds, we start running some software, provided by an
organisation called "Perception and Performance"
and I think it is this :
It's actually quite interesting, and an agreeable way of spending 40
mins. After a set of general profiling questions (it's completely
anonymous, by the way), you see some videos. For the first set you
click the mouse when you see a hazard. For the second you watch a
drivers eye view of a road, and then respond as to whether you would
travel slower or faster, and by how much (they were all open road, so
I responded +30mph for almost all). The third shows a drivers eye
view of a car gaining on another, and you click when you reach the
distance you consider safe.
At the end of this, you get a printed assessment. Turns out I drive
"very much faster than average", I follow "further away than average",
my hazard perception is "much faster than average", and my emotional
feedback is "high". This last surprises me, as I always think I'm
fairly dispassionate on the road, but I believe the other scores are
are a) accurate and b) not displeasing to me.
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The emotional feedback rating is probably a reflection of the healthy
mistrust you have of other drivers - a very good thing imo :-)
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Then we have a break, and another presenter takes over. He is very
obviously a retired copper - spotted him instantly when we arrived.
He's an ebullient and pleasant chap, and doesn't give us a hard sell.
However, the 2 hour session is essentially propaganda, and he majors
on a number of much used stats which are questionable, such as speed
being a cause of 30% of accidents (rather than a factor), and uses the
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IIRC the 'one Third Lie' is more blatent than that. 7pc of crashes have
speed as a factor. THe other causes they lump in as speed are not
speed. Indeed if an officer ticked 'other' as a cause of the crash it
gets lumped in as speed related! Very interesting.
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highway code braking distances, which I pick him up on - he promises
to address this later, but doesn't really. His intent is, I believe
to make people *think* about what speed they were doing - a criteria
to get on this course is that you were only a few mph over the limit.
This works for most people in the room, but not on me - I think I got
caught by the camera cos I slowed to exactly 30mph, but then gassed it
too quickly afterwards, and was still in range.
At the end, we answer a few questions on the computer, asking whether
our behaviour will change. I answer no.
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Oh well that's you in the top 20 most wanted drivers then ;-)
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As I said earlier - responses were anonymous. The only time our names
were checked was when we signed in. They made a point of allowing us
to sit anywhere in the class room.
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Yes and I'd imagine they'd still be able to link your answers to who you
were. Was the place equipped with CCTV?
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No, no TV. I really don't think they could accurately associate
people with the answers they gave.
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I'm only teasing anyway - not that you're bothered anyway.
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I value your opinion above most here.
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I had gotten the impression that there was some requirement to show attitude
improvement.
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Anyway, swapping 60 quid and 3 points for 72 quid and 3 hours seems a
reasonable deal to me.
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Well yes but it was never going to have any impact on you was it?
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Or come to that anyone else who drives/rides a lot and considers
themselves capable.
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I like to think I was reasonably open minded when I went in.
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This I believe as much as you do. I'm not sure what it would do for me
though. I think I'd be secretly in contempt of it all, but play ball to
make it look good for those on the day.
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You might like to think that but I am not the least bit surprised by
your commentary on what happened and how you felt about it.
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I'd be surprised if you were surprised.
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