I’ve been sent to the naughty step.

Last week I attended a speed awareness course in order to avoid getting three points on my licence

I’ve been sent to the naughty step. Last week I attended a speed awareness course in order to avoid getting three points on my licence. My crime was seemingly trivial, going at 24mph in a 20 mph zone, but more about just how trivial or not later.

This course is part of a highly successful programme devised more than 30 years ago. At the time, the police force in Devon and Cornwall was issuing lots of speeding tickets to newly arrived holidaymakers who were exhausted at the end of a long drive and therefore ignored the 30 mph zones through towns and villages. But the whole process seemed futile as most of the people being caught were repeat offenders. The fines simply were seen as a tiresome expense.

Therefore, with the help of behavioural psychologists, they devised these courses which could be taken instead of getting three licence points – you automatically lose the right to drive if you amass 12 over the space of three years. Instead, relatively minor offenders – not those who were doing 70 in a30 zone but rather those who were going a few miles above the limit were given the alternative of going on the course, for a fee that was little different from a standard fine. Now the course is available around the country, but only for people who have transgressed in a relatively minor way.

And it worked. According to Simon and Deborah who ran the course – and it turned out were an ‘item’ which was rather amusing – recidivist rates fell far more sharply among those who took the course rather than simply copping the points. And I could see why. Despite the grumblings of my 23 fellow attendees at the outset – ‘this is such a waste of time, I was hardly over the limit’ – they found it was actually very enlightening. And the presenters got a bit warm round of applause at the end. It must be said that they were excellent as not only did they know their stuff, but there was nothing preachy about the way they explained the dangers and risks of speeding. They were engaging and at times even amusing, but there was a serious message behind their humour – speed kills.

The course is three hours long, and much of it is taken up with showing various scenarios, first about the effects of excess speed, then about how to manage your emotions as anger is a common cause of accidents, and then a practice session where we looked at various scenarios to see where the dangers could come from. There was also a section on technology, notably on how many cars have speed limiters but few people use them with, too, a warning not to rely on technology to determine your behaviour.

There was a suggestion that all new drivers should be made to take the course, and that sounds sensible. I took away one clear statistic, shown in a video of cars being required to stop from a certain speed. It was remarkable. At the point where a car stopped having slammed the brakes on at 20 mph, a car going just 21 mph would still be running at 8 mph. So just that one mph excessive speed would greatly increase the chances of a damaging accident. A car going 80 mph rather than 70 mph, the legal limit, would still be travelling at 37 mph at the point the slower car would have stopped in an emergency which increases the chance of a fatality by 40 per cent.

Britain has relatively safe roads but we still kill around 1600 people each year and seriously injure around 30,000. Lower speed limits have contributed to a reduction in the toll, but people must obey them, even when they seem unnecessary. It was a good lesson to take away. I hardly ever drive, being a Londoner, but I will take heed when I do – and so should all of us.

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