Forgive me pedestrians for I have sinned...

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.