Speed Awareness Courses
Here is an idea…
If you are caught speeding moderately, you have a choice. You can pay a £100 fine and accept 3 points on your licence. This has to be declared when you renew your car insurance, so your premiums might rise. Alternatively, you can pay roughly the same amount (the price varies by area), and spend about 3 hours taking a speed awareness course, either in-person or online. There is no requirement to declare the course to your insurance company. Around 90% of people caught speeding choose the course.
The evidence from a high quality report by IPSOS and the University of Leeds is that a “Speed Awareness Course has a larger effect in reducing speed reoffending than the penalty points and fine associated with Fixed Penalty Notices”.
What interests me is that people really like these courses. According to the Trusted Reviews website, the two biggest course providers, TTC group and DriveTech, score 4.8 and 4.7 out of 5 respectively. These are remarkably high scores for something that people are forced to spend money on, against their will.
Like most people, I think I am a good driver. I have some evidence for this - it is almost 30 years since I made an insurance claim. (I backed into a post in an unlit carpark, sigh). Given the reviews, I decided to do a speed awareness course. I was sure I would learn something - 40,000 reviews can’t be wrong…
Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take a speed awareness course unless you are caught speeding.
I don’t really understand this. If someone wants to become a better driver, why would the government ban them from doing so?
So my idea is that people would be allowed to do them if they want to. They would pay the same price, and become a better driver as a result.
I have since taken a speed awareness course. I was snapped driving at 87mph on the M25 late one night. (The road was dry, empty and so on, but I have no excuse: the rules are the rules, and I have cruise control.)
I took my course in-person. We came in all shapes and sizes - from people in their 20s to 80s. The group was grumpy and resentful beforehand. Much muttering about how it was only a few miles over, the limit was daft in that place, the sign was unclear. One person told me that they had been driving at that speed on that road for years without a problem.
The session was well-led by two people, one was a driving instructor, the other had been a professional driver. They knew their stuff, and they knew how to handle a room. As the numbers on Trusted Reviews suggest, people got something out of it, and thought it was a good course.
So having done one, I stick by my idea that anyone should be allowed to sign up. I am sure TTC and Drivetech will be happy to offer more sessions. Perhaps insurance companies could ask if people have done this - it might indicate a lower risk driver.
My second suggestion is that the government repeats the earlier analysis, but compares people who have been found speeding and do these courses in-person, with those who do them online. My sense - from friends who have done it online - is that people engage much less. Maybe online is less effective? If so, we should return to in-person courses only.
Finally, while talking about roads, I wrote earlier about how to solve the driving test crisis. The problem is now even worse. When I checked last week there were no tests available at any date in any of the 100 nearest driving centres to my house. I would have checked more, but the DVSA website blocked me thinking I was a bot! My earlier plan would work, and I hope the new government will follow it. It would also raise £20m+ for the government, so it is a win-win.
Lots to like in this, Tim.
I think perhaps there are some general lessons for policy in the experience of good quality, mandatory demands on citizens. I did a motorcycle training course in the early 1990s in Islington, provided by the council, run on Saturday mornings mostly by off-duty police men and women. It was all in preparation for the full motorbike driving license. I came a little grumpy, thinking that since I had been driving my 125cc for years, they had nothing to teach me, and why did I need to devote a half-dozen Saturday mornings to this? And yet I still think of the lessons drummed into me, of the accidental social group created, between the boy racers who had been forced onto the course because they had been caught riding uninsured, with no license, at high speed to the impeccably turned out neo-mod on her unwieldy vespa. I think that electric bikes over a certain power should require this kind of course. And, taking the idea yet further, I think that countries with well-run militia armies generate the same long term value from putting citizens through useful and common experiences. Despite all the prior grumbles.