Yahoo News Why opting for the Safety Awareness Course rather than licence points could actually drive you mad
A year or two ago a traffic camera in Camden caught me driving through a red light in my car. I was racing to collect my wife and children from outside a railway station. Their phones had run out of battery, it was raining, and as only happens when you’re running late, there were roadworks everywhere I went, every lane was filled with parked cars, lorries unloading and broken-down buses, and every single traffic light turned to red the second I arrived. This particular one turned to amber as I approached, so I did what we all do in such circumstances: I put my foot down and hoped for the best.
A couple of weeks later I received a blurry black-and-white photograph in the post of my car about two feet over the line at a red traffic light, along with an admonishment that I had gone through it something like 0.2 seconds after it turned from amber to red. It was a fair cop and I could blame no one except myself. And the sneaky CCTV cameras. And my wife (joke).
The letter brought what seemed like good news, along with the bad news of my transgression. It told me I could avoid getting 3 points on my hitherto unblemished driving licence if I chose the alternative of attending a Safety Awareness course. Like many other drivers who have received such a letter, I weighed up the prospect of points on my licence, leading to difficulties hiring a car abroad, and the probability of higher insurance costs, against the inconvenience of spending a couple of hours in a classroom. I chose the course.
As I parked outside the venue, a hotel in Camden, a woman reversed her car into the front of mine while I was still sitting at the wheel. You can imagine my fury to discover she was not there to attend the course herself: “Next time,” I scolded her as she wrote down her telephone number. Much to my surprise, I found the course itself to be rather good fun. The two ‘teachers’ were like a comedy double act and took the line that they sympathised entirely with all of us, which meant we liked them even more.
The other attendees were as mixed a bunch as you can imagine, ranging from an Orthodox Jew in full Hasidic garb to a young man who had flown in from his home in Kuwait specifically to avoid points on his licence, an unfortunate fellow who claimed he had been going 21mph across Tower Bridge, and a policeman who admitted that he drove much too fast when behind the wheel of his own car, mostly because he was quite an angry man.
It was quite like a therapy session, with the teachers coaxing all sorts of embarrassing psychological information out of us in order to illustrate the personality flaws that had led to our misdemeanours. Not that we needed much persuading: most people were only too happy to own up to our terrible driving. Conversely, I felt particularly hard done by considering this was, by my entirely non-scientific calculations, one of the very few times I had run a red light, making my capture particularly unfortunate, and terribly unfair. I think that’s how I put it in my letter of appeal which was, mystifyingly, rejected.
Anyway, two hours later I emerged, chastened, £90 poorer, and a much better and safer driver. Ever since then I've driven like an old lady: specifically an old lady who lives in the middle of nowhere and doesn’t realise there is anyone else on the road. That, apparently, is how you’re supposed to drive in London if you want to avoid being caught by the millions of hidden cameras observing your every indiscretion, despite the fact that everyone else on the road seems to be running red lights and speeding with impunity.
So now, living in a borough where every street, including the big wide ones with four lanes, has a 20mph speed limit, and most of the smaller ones have speed bumps (do we still call them Sleeping Policemen? I do), I have become the lone Safe Driver, meticulously observing the 20mph even when being honked, abused, gesticulated at and overtaken by cars, buses and even bicyclists. On one occasion, after tooting sanctimoniously at someone who overtook me in a Smart car (I know!), I was physically threatened in front of my entire family by a Grant Mitchell lookalike who emerged from the PASSENGER SIDE to encourage me to get out and “make something of it”.
You will be able to spot me if you ever find yourself driving behind me (silver Mini Cooper, in and around Hackney, registration on application). I’ll be the one stopping at every orange light - well behind the line, and definitely not in the coloured bit reserved for bicyclists which is always empty because cyclists prefer to loiter by the kerb (we had a few on the course who had made that mistake). I’ll also be the one (probably the only one) refusing to move over into a bus lane if emergency vehicles come up behind me - because that's what we were told you have to do. Our teacher was very firm about that. So if you’re in need of urgent CPR somewhere in north London, you’d better hope the ambulance isn’t stuck behind me with its siren blaring.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that my driving is now safer than it's ever been, even though I say so myself. And it only cost me £90. This week I learned just how much more it cost me.
Although everybody had told me you don’t have to declare that you’ve been on such a course when you renew your insurance – and friends who have been on the course insist that they were told this by the teachers - you’ll find that most insurers ask you whether you have. And although they apparently cannot check because the courses are not run by the DVLA, it would invalidate your insurance to lie on the form or even not to declare anything that might be considered “relevant” (they’re cunning when it comes to small print).
At first everything with my renewal application was fine. The form didn’t ask anything about such courses: it just asked whether I’d been convicted of any driving offences (no) and whether I’d got any points on my licence (no). I was given a quote, which was reasonable, and less than I’d been paying last year. I was all ready to click the button. Then, when I was presented with a summary of what I had submitted, there was a little extra bit in red saying that, if I had ever been on a Safety Awareness course, I should contact the insurers by phone. So I did.
Now you might assume, as I naively did, that having been on a Safety Awareness course, you would be considered a lower risk than someone whose awareness of road safety had not been refreshed. The clue, you might think, is in the name. You would be wrong. Very wrong. Suddenly my quote went up. By almost £300. I asked why and they told me they looked not at the outcome of the Safety Awareness course, but at the offence that caused me to be offered it. I asked how much my insurance would have gone up if I had taken the three points, just for comparison. They told me they couldn’t answer that because the calculations were made by a computer. But I’ve since looked it up online and learned that the average increase for SIX points is nine per cent. I have just paid about 80% more.
So what to do? I would recommend having a good long think about it before taking 'advantage' of what sounds like a great offer. It seems that some insurance companies punish you for it and others don’t. Either way they've got you over a barrel because car insurance is compulsory and I can't help thinking that the high cost (and impossibility of getting any policy without a valid MOT, tax and licence) is the main reason why so many accidents now are hit-and-run. It’s also the reason it keeps going up – those of us who do pay, and are driving legally, are effectively subsidising the growing number of people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, I shall continue to wonder what exactly are you supposed to do if someone crashes into you, you get out to 'exchange details' and they either drive off or tell you what to do with your details. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
