Gentle Reader , I must admit I have been a bad boy.
I jumped the red lights at Tulse Hill. Or at least that is what a letter I received from
the PoPo said. They didn’t send me any
photos or evidence but invited me on an AA Drivetech Course. This took place in a large hotel in
Bromley.
Being nosey I had a good look round the hotel while the
respectable citizens sat waiting where the receptionists told them to. Eventually I found the room by following the
signs rather than talking to people and a woman we shall call Ms B invited me
in and told me that the hotel had originally all been a large mansion. “It must have been wonderful in its day,” she
said. I cast my eye round the room and
mentally noted who’d been smart enough to find the room from the signs and not
from talking to anyone. Eventually the
rest of the sinners were hearded in.
Ms B and her co-compere who we shall call Mr R told us that
we should all switch off our mobile phones (not put them on silent) in the name
of “Privacy”… justice these days is executed not just without showing one all
the evidence but also in secret. I have
read that the purpose of these courses is “education not punishment” but coming
from the era of corporal punishment in schools and having spent much of my
school career in a never-ending series of detentions I was never able to quite
separate out education from punishment.
Sure enough Ms B and Mr R made much of the course lasting 4 hours,
regularly underlined how long 4 hours was and made us all feel as if we were in
detention once again.
People could, said Ms B, be on the course for any number of
road traffic violations which I cannot now remember but when asked most people
turned out to be there for traffic light offences. When Ms B asked why I was there I said I didn’t
know exactly because although the PoPo would tell me the set of lights I must
have passed them more than once that day and couldn’t exactly remember where I
was now. She said there was one camera
at those lights – the one on the yellow poll pointing south but that didn’t
make much sense to me as I recon I was going north. “Did you ask the police for evidence?” she
said. “No,” I replied, “I was worried
they might remove their offer to settle.”
At this point a small Greek Chorus from the audience chimed
in that they too had all been caught at exactly the same set of lights and
started on about how this seemed statistically odd. “So has my son,” Ms B said in an attempt to
win her audience back. But “It’s a trap,”
said one woman – a thought she continued to punctuate the afternoon with at
random intervals. And gradually, just
like when I was at school, I started to make mental notes on who the naughty
kids in the class were. After all, in detention
you’ve got to make your own entertainment.
Recording was banned, of course, but fortunately they did
give us a logbook to fill out which they were “not going to mark” so I decided
to look industrious by filling it up with short character descriptions of the participants
and from those notes I have written this piece … bless the police they think of
everything.
We were supposed, of course, to actively participate so we
discussed things in tables and in pairs that we were put into by the course
tutors. I was paired with a young black
man who we will call Mr K and to be fair to us myself and Mr K got 100 per cent
on all the questions – although this may have been something to do with me
realising that the answers to most of the questions were in the copy of the
highway code we’d been given. We both
felt very intelligent for deducing this.
As time progressed Ms B’s narrative that speed cameras and
traffic light cameras were only there as a last resort started to become
unpopular with a certain element of the audience. Ms B and Mr R’s nemesis was a man called
Roger. Roger insisted that there were
cameras everywhere these days watching us.
“There’s probably even one in here,” he said. And indeed there may well have been.
At the comfort break (about 1 hour 55 minutes in) during
which we were allowed to buy a coffee (there was a proper bar in the hotel but
no one seemed to want to buy a pint for some reason) Roger remarked that the
course was “quite informative” to two young women “but they could easily lop
off an hour and get their point over better –it’s too long, isn’t it?” I couldn’t decide if Roger was being ironic
or he just didn’t get that boredom was the punishment. The ladies sagely agreed. “I’ve been on three of these now,” said Roger. “I’m a repeat offender.” How wonderful it was to have this Fletcher of
the roads to show us all the ropes. The
ladies gave Roger a look as if to say…
…no, I don't want your number
No, I don't want to give you mine and
No, I don't want to meet you nowhere
No, I don't want none of your time and…
After the intermission Roger’s heckling became more
vociferous and Ms B and Mr R fell back on that time old chestnut used by all
teachers since the dawn of time – threatening that they’d have to keep us there
longer if we (or any individual) made progress through the syllabus slower. The threat of detention on top of detention
split the room between those who believed this threat and those who took no
notice. A small corner of mothers
pretended at disinterest but occasionally broke out in glares at Roger…
Tempers flared again when the thorny issue of traffic light
phasing came up and people asked why some traffic lights changed very quickly
and others very slowly. The anticipated
answer that we should anticipate the lights changing was given but it was not
universally popular. Ms B told us
sternly that there were no excuses for running a red light and my inner Horace
Rumple said “rubbish there are loads of mitigating arguments” but for some
reason I didn’t verbalise this.
Not to worry Roger was there to verbalise these thoughts for
me. “Class clown,” muttered a bearded
disabled man at the back but I couldn’t help laughing at Roger’s antics
precisely because Ms B and Mr R seemed such wonderful straight men/women for
him to play against. And really who can
blame Roger for being the class clown? I
dare say after I’ve published this a load of open mic acts will be running red
lights all over London just because it will guarantee them a full room of
people to try material out on without the inconvenience of having to bring a
mate to a bringer or become their own promoter…
Eventually we got onto the consequences of bad driving such
as injury and having to testify in court.
A lady said she’d been to Court as a witness to a road traffic accident and
been made to look a complete idiot by a Barrister who “twisted everything”. This caused a retired Barrister to pipe up
that she shouldn’t be intimidated because it was for the Judge to decide on the
facts of the case. Which was odd because
my inner Horace Rumpole said that actually it should be up to the jury – but then
again if everything went to jury trial what would happen to Ms B and Mr R? Actually I expect most such cases are just
heard in the Magistrate’s Court.
This reminded me of a story about how I was once a witness
to a hit and rush crash and got myself into a state of paranoia about potentially
being asked by the PoPo to give a witness statement against a professional
criminal. So I told it …rather well I
thought and with a self-depreciating punchline that got a nice laugh. There’s something in it … just needs
tightening. Well, why should Roger get
all the stage time? Although 4 hours is
a bit long to test 1 gag. Then again it
wasn’t as boring as some of the open mic “stayer” nights I’ve sat through…
Eventually the 4 hours moved inevitably to a close and
despite not having got all of the syllabus over just most of it Ms B and Mr R
decided to end on time. And just like
school everybody scrammed out of there as fast as their legs could carry them…I doubt I will see any of them ever again. Although part of me worries that Roger and I
may meet again some day…
Still, a thoroughly entertaining 4 hours. For me at least… of course, I could tell you
all about road traffic things, psychological biases and road death stats and how the junction at Tulse Hill has an unusal number of fatalities/accidents but I
don’t see why I should give that kind of information away for free. If you want to find out that badly …
…run a red light.
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