Points - Did they affect the way you drive?
Discussion
Got busted for speeding twice one evening by the same cop. Got 3 points for my trouble and a telling off that rang for a few months.
Drove like a saint for 3 years.
Only points I've ever got.
The lesson I learned - cops never give tickets to speccy four eyes. Of all the times I have been pulled in the UK, that was the one and only time I was wearing contacts. Heard something similar from other four eyed freaks.
Drove like a saint for 3 years.
Only points I've ever got.
The lesson I learned - cops never give tickets to speccy four eyes. Of all the times I have been pulled in the UK, that was the one and only time I was wearing contacts. Heard something similar from other four eyed freaks.
I have had three lots of points. All far enough apart I've only ever had three points on my licence at a time.
That's over twenty-five years of driving.
At a guess - that shows that the points did the square root of feck all to my driving style.
Interestingly doing the IAM and getting two ROSPA Gold awards probably did more.
I now drive faster than I ever have but in different places and at different times...and I do find it far easier to stick to speed limits and I always know what they are.
That's over twenty-five years of driving.
At a guess - that shows that the points did the square root of feck all to my driving style.
Interestingly doing the IAM and getting two ROSPA Gold awards probably did more.
I now drive faster than I ever have but in different places and at different times...and I do find it far easier to stick to speed limits and I always know what they are.
I've only ever had one set of points on my license - I got them last October.
I was caught doing 85mph on a lightly trafficked motorway. Conditions, visibility & road surface were very good, the car was perfectly maintained and extremely capable and I was aware of exactly what my speed was. I saw a camera van on a bridge from half a mile away and immediately adjusted my speed to 70mph, but had already been snapped.
It has not changed my driving one iota.
I wrote something similar on a thread a while back that if a traffic policeman had stopped me and had a sensible chat with me, giving reasons why 85mph was excessive, unsafe or inappropriate for those conditions I would have certainly adjusted my speed downwards whether the officer had deemed a FPN necessary or not.
I was caught doing 85mph on a lightly trafficked motorway. Conditions, visibility & road surface were very good, the car was perfectly maintained and extremely capable and I was aware of exactly what my speed was. I saw a camera van on a bridge from half a mile away and immediately adjusted my speed to 70mph, but had already been snapped.
It has not changed my driving one iota.
I wrote something similar on a thread a while back that if a traffic policeman had stopped me and had a sensible chat with me, giving reasons why 85mph was excessive, unsafe or inappropriate for those conditions I would have certainly adjusted my speed downwards whether the officer had deemed a FPN necessary or not.
dave_gt said:
I wrote something similar on a thread a while back that if a traffic policeman had stopped me and had a sensible chat with me, giving reasons why 85mph was excessive, unsafe or inappropriate for those conditions I would have certainly adjusted my speed downwards whether the officer had deemed a FPN necessary or not.
What if the main reason he told you was that 85 was a speed at which you could be given an FPN? Or that the speed limit was a macro risk reduction measure which didn't reduce risk if people as a whole didn't keep to it?Bert
BertBert said:
What if the main reason he told you was that 85 was a speed at which you could be given an FPN? Or that the speed limit was a macro risk reduction measure which didn't reduce risk if people as a whole didn't keep to it?
Bert
Bert,Bert
If the main reason for stopping me was that 85mph was a speed at which I could be given a FPN my thoughts would depend somewhat on how I had been caught:
If, for example I had overtaken a marked car at 85 I would be taking a very long hard look at my driving for failing to notice a marked car going in the same direction as me, irrespective of the issuing of a FPN.
If I had been spotted from a distance of ½ mile by an officer in a stationary marked car who then pulled me for the primary reason that it is a speed at which a FPN can be issued then fine; it is down to his or her discretion anyway. Techincally a FPN can be issued at 70.1mph but common sense dictates that tickets are not issued for that speed. If these had been the circumstances and this had been the reason I would have remained polite, accepted the FPN if one was given, but I don’t expect it would actually have changed my driving. Rather like being caught by the camera, I will accept a penalty for exceeding a numerical speed limit if I was indeed speeding, but that in itself was not enough to fundamentally change my driving in this instance.
The thing is that there are so many variables as to how I could be caught speeding by a police officer that there are endless possibilities as to the penalty I would expect and the effect it would have on my driving. But this is the beauty of having a real live person dishing out the tickets/advice and not a camera. All of the variables can be considered and the necessary education or penalty can be given out.
I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what a macro risk reduction measure is, but assuming it is changing one variable (speed in this instance) to see the effect it has on accidents or KSIs then I would have appreciated signage earlier on the motorway telling me what was going on and I would have gladly artificially reduced my speed to 70mph on that section in order to participate in the experiment.
The conditions, car and driver at the time were, in my opinion safe for a speed considerably in excess of the 85mph I was travelling at. I rightly or wrongly believe that 80-85mph is a speed at which a police officer is quite likely to use his or her discretion to not issue a FPN if my driving is safe, so it seems a good compromise to me. I would be more than happy to have been pulled and had every aspect of my roadcraft looked at and if said roadcraft was found to be genuinely lacking I would look to alter whatever it was that was lacking. If that meant slowing down in a repeat of those circumstances then I certainly would.
dave_gtout said:
I’m afraid I don’t know exactly what a macro risk reduction measure is, but assuming it is changing one variable (speed in this instance) to see the effect it has on accidents or KSIs then I would have appreciated signage earlier on the motorway telling me what was going on and I would have gladly artificially reduced my speed to 70mph on that section in order to participate in the experiment.
Just to pick up on this one, hope you don't mind. What I mean is that rightly or wrongly, the govt have decided that reducing average speeds, reduces risk. That's what speed limits are about. A measure applied to the whole driving population that reduces risk. There are arguments for and against that premise, but on the whole it sounds fine. Overall there will be less crashes if people drive more slowly. Note that is absolutely NOT a "speed kills" mantra.The specific safety of your (or my) driving at 85mph is irrelevant. To achieve the overall risk reduction, people have to obey the speed limits. The best way to make that happen is to uphold the law with regard to the speed limits. That's a cast iron reason that plod could explain to you whilst writing out the ticket. Nothing whatsoever to do with the safety of your specific situation. Also a very good reason to have speed cameras doing it.
There are a myriad of other approaches to reducing risk, it's just that speed management is one that most governments embrace.
Bert
BertBert said:
Just to pick up on this one, hope you don't mind......
I don’t mind you picking up on it at all.In this instance, if I had been given a ticket by a traffic officer with this being the dominant reason I expect my reaction would be similar to being caught by a camera. I would remain polite and accept the FPN if one was issued but I wouldn’t expect it to fundamentally change my driving.
If I choose to exceed the speed limit on a NSL road or motorway then I am breaking the law. It might be a law that I do not completely agree with in its current form and enforcement, but it is a law nonetheless so I accept that a FPN may ensue if I exceed it.
A traffic officer, or indeed any other competent advanced driver or instructor picking genuine holes in my roadcraft is far more likely to cause a change in my driving than a FPN dished out for the numerical offence of exceeding the NSL.
I’m not a fan of this government; it so often seems that they really have not got a clue and without wishing to turn this into a political thread, the views of this government as to a link between speed and safety will not have any bearing at all on the way I conduct myself behind the wheel. Indeed, I can’t see any of the views of this government having any bearing on the way I conduct myself in any way. I prefer the idea of reducing risk by increasing overall driving standards, in particular observation and skid control, but of course that is easier said than done and is a major thread in itself.
I personally feel that a class 1 police officer is better able to assess individual relationships between speed and acceptable risk in the massive number of different circumstances that are encountered in daily driving than a seemingly incompetent group of people in Westminster. So in regard to the original question, a good chat with a class 1 /other genuinely advanced driver is far more likely to change my driving than a single instance of getting 3 points on my licence.
BertBert said:
Overall there will be less crashes if people drive more slowly.
I take issue with that. Overall there will be less severe crashes with reduced speed. There will not necessarily be less crashes. In fact, you can make a convincing argument that there will be more crashes of lower severity if the limits are artificially low and are obeyed. (Based on research from air traffic controller training) Driving to the speed limit does not make people (in general) pay any more attention to what they are doing - there will always be a proportion of the population who drive without paying sufficient attention.
Most of the OAPs round here seem to drive at 40mph absolutely everywhere. It does not stop a few of them parking their cars in motorbikes and other cars. The younger generation seem to prefer intersection with the scenery at higher speeds...
No points yet, but I have been stopped a couple of times receiving a very stern warning once which made me think about a few things. But I'm a speccy geek, so have been very lucky so far...
s.dnb said:
BertBert said:
Overall there will be less crashes if people drive more slowly.
I take issue with that. Overall there will be less severe crashes with reduced speed. There will not necessarily be less crashes. In fact, you can make a convincing argument that there will be more crashes of lower severity if the limits are artificially low and are obeyed. (Based on research from air traffic controller training) Driving to the speed limit does not make people (in general) pay any more attention to what they are doing - there will always be a proportion of the population who drive without paying sufficient attention.
Most of the OAPs round here seem to drive at 40mph absolutely everywhere. It does not stop a few of them parking their cars in motorbikes and other cars. The younger generation seem to prefer intersection with the scenery at higher speeds...
No points yet, but I have been stopped a couple of times receiving a very stern warning once which made me think about a few things. But I'm a speccy geek, so have been very lucky so far...
deadmau5 said:
They say that a police man won't pull you on the motorway unless you're doing over 85 (assuming conditions are suitable), but what is the minimum that a camera on the motorway can get you at?
Who's they & which Policeman ?How does anyone know what the individual tolerance level of all Police officers is ?
Whilst undoubtedly the closer to the limit you are the less likely you are to get stopped for exceeding it, the only to be sure of not being stopped for that particular offence is to not do it at all.
Edited by vonhosen on Sunday 16th August 12:23
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