Speed Awareness

Well, I went on the Speed Awareness course.  It was somewhat improved from the running traffic lights course I went on some years ago in that it was online rather than 50 of us having to drive to a rundown hotel in Streatham.  The lecture was somewhat shorter this time running at normal Hollywood 3 hours 15 minutes length rather than the previous David Lean roadshow presentation length of 4 hours 15 (see here).  Perhaps the audience response to the last one I attended had resulted in a reworking of the format and it had been adjusted after previews.  Or perhaps like a multiplex cinema distributor someone had worked out that if you stick to the 3 hour format you can maximise the number of showings in a day.  

Certainly someone had thought about how to milk the format financially as there were different prices for the course depending on how much flexibility you wanted on moving the date which seemed exceptionally cynical since the service presumably costs the same whenever it is delivered.

As usual the format was presented by a man and a woman.  The Jill Dando of the team asked me how it would affect my life if I lost my driving licence.  To which I replied "That's none of your business, is it?".  The audience seemed to find this quite amusing.  Don't know why.  I suppose because it's an appeal to fear and as a psychopath that's just not an emotion I have often.

The usual suspects were all present and correct including this time the addition of a refugee from Iraq who's English was only slightly better than Manuel in Fawlty Towers.  The Nick Ross of the presenting team was very patient though as he struggled through a thesaurus of words to find ones the Iraqi immigrant could understand.  He was okay with functional pedestrian phrases but he had more difficulty with words that related to abstract nouns or concepts which I found interesting as I'd previously not that about how we learn language in that way.  I kept thinking of the useless Latin nouns that Mr Johnson would teach us like laid waste (vastatus).  Perhaps if there wasn't so much vastatio going on in the middle east, he wouldn't have needed to come here and be stopped for speeding on his moped.  I couldn't imagine him driving a car but perhaps I am stereotyping... I started to wonder if Iraqi driving licences were valid in the UK.  Then I started to wonder if Dr Ashti Hawrami had done a UK driving test when I worked for him...  Then my mind went off on all kinds of other tangents as like Stan Laurel I amused myself "lobby watching"...

A lady kept complaining about trying to drive at the speed limit and being constantly overtaken by other drivers to which the Nick Ross of the outfit said "whatever the speed limit is, you must drive at that".  Perhaps, but it's quite difficult if no one's going to be enforcing it.  I've taken literally no notice of the Lambeth/Southwark blanket 20mph speed limit since it was brought in because it simply wasn't enforced.  We were told at some point 20mph limits were going to be self enforcing but clearly there were few  volunteers for being continually bored to death all the time so a realistic deterrent has been finally introduced.  Nick Ross asked us if the few minutes we'd saved were worth the 3 hours of the course.  Well, since the law hasn't been enforced for at least 5 years my cost quality time triangle says yes.  I've saved well over 3 hours so am still on top...

There was a lot of stuff about stopping distances which I found odd as surely the fact energy is related to velocity squared is a more convincing argument for not speeding.  At one point I was asked how many car lengths I drove behind a car going at 40mph to which I replied "I don't know.  I use the 2 second gap".  For some reason though although it is still valid and works the two second gap was judged too complicated for the punters to understand...

Eventually Nick Ross told us we could avoid speeding by better planning our time.  For instance by giving people time windows instead of actual times of arrival.  For example "I'll be there between 7:30 and 8pm" rather than "8pm".  Given time is money Im not sure this is the best strategy but I suppose it conveniently front loads costs off the state and on to everyone else.  Then again perhaps comedians could introduce a policy of being deliberately late for gigs in order to drive up expectations, like Hitler always being late for political rallies on Joseph Goebbels's advice.  I mean, it was a bit brass neck to talk about time flexibility given the course itself had zero time flexibility for rescheduling unless, of course, you paid extra for it upfront in cash.  It didn't surprise me that many of the participants had jobs that involved driving like Estate Agents driving between properties or builders.

Finally there was time for Nick Ross to tell us that if we shared any recording of the meeting our passes would be automatically voided.  So I hasten to conclude this piece by stating that it is a work of fiction and any similarities between any persons living or dead is completely coincidental.

Of course it would be nice to think that doling out fines for driving at (allegedly) 24mph was all about safety but on the Mayor of London's website Sir Khan tells us explicitly that it is in fact a social engineering policy aimed at stopping the majority of people driving at all : "Our Transport Strategy sets out a big, bold aim for 80 per cent of all journeys in London to be made by walking, cycling or using public transport by 2041.". Yes peak oil and net zero are here, and right here's where us plebs start paying.  I expect I'll be being fined for driving at 14mph by 2041 ... If private cars haven't been replaced entirely by electric ElonAIcabs by then ...