trem1 wrote:Welly wrote:Today I'm going for my speed awareness* course, thought I'd gen up on some highway code basics like road signage and speed limits.....Verdict: I know f*ck all
How was it ?? I do mine next week
Well I thought it was very useful and interesting; we were asked about National Speed Limits for all classes of vehicle (but getting it right wasn't compulsory) I got 'Lorries' wrong because they've increased from 40 to 50mph this year on single carriageways and I didn't know they were allowed 60mph on Dual Carriageways. Most people got Transit-type vans wrong as they have lower limits than cars.
There were 25 of us in the room and sat over 4 tables in groups (that's £2,375.00 and we were the second group that day); two guys spoke in turns at the front and used a projector giving examples of different scenarios on the road or facts & figures to look at and then we had to discuss within our groups and took it in turns* to speak our findings to the instructor (mostly me on our table
).
Most of the course was spent in recognising
where NSL's apply as, especially 30mph limits, do not have to be signed regularly. There were differing opinions about what a dual carriageway is (it has to have a central divide and curbs on each side of each road).
Something I found interesting was braking 'speeds'; a video showed a car stopping from a marker point at 30mph to a dead-stop...then another car took the same but started braking at 35mph (it was still doing 11mph at the 'stop' position) and at 40mph it was doing 18mph at the 'stop'
most were horrified at this as most of the braking effort happens in the last few metres.
Generally we were made to think about speeding and the potential consequences; we were each asked why we were 'referred' for speeding and each answer was written on a flippy-chart at the front. Most people said they were pressed for time or late for something etc etc...then they got us to imagine we were sat in court after you'd killed a pedestrian and the only reason you could give for your speed was that you were 'late for an appointment'
and it was kinda "well you should have left plenty of time for the journey then" and to be fair it was quite sobering there are no excuses for speeding is there?
Their tip for driving in a 30 limit was to use 3rd gear as you benefit from a bit of engine braking and you can hear when the speed increases over 30 whereas 4th gear is going to pull you over 30 too easily, fair enough.
We were asked how many people we thought were killed in the UK on the roads in 2014? it was 1775
then there was 22,000 serious injuries and I think 200,000 'injuries' everyone got those answers wrong.
And according to research; folk that attend the SAC are three times less likely to be nabbed for speeding again over folk who simply take the points/fine so overall I'd say it was a good thing and a lot like advanced driving tuition.
Ooh, we were discussing 'tailgating' behavior and were asked "what goes through your mind when being tailgated?" after a short silence I said "it must be an Audi driver!" ............f*ck me that went down badly........the instructor hurriedly moved the topic on after tying to joke about stereotypes
