Two very different courses

[major_clanger]

In the last few days I've been on two courses, and I now know more about avoiding speeding and more about 3D printing.

Several months ago, before attimes_bracing and I bought our Mini, we were returning in a rented car from a trip down south via a rural route through Warwickshire (specifically, the A435 near Kings Coughton). I was aware that the bit of road we were on was a 40mph zone and was pretty sure we were doing that, but the flash of a speed camera made me look at the speedometer. 45mph; speedos can be a bit out, but I suspected that I'd just been caught going a bit too fast.

We returned the rental car and reported this to the hire company, where the rep said that it might be quite a while before we heard for sure as any ticket would have to come to them first for an enquiry as to who had been driving. For a good couple of months there was nothing, then I got the envelope from Warwickshire Police. I had indeed been caught doing 46mph in a 40 zone. I dutifully filled in the Notice of Intent to Prosecute (reflecting ironically that I had seen several of those in my time in the Magistrates' Court) and a few weeks later got a further letter explaining that as I'd not had any speeding offences in the last 3 years and had only been slightly over the limit I would be offered a Speed Awareness Course for £80 instead of the alternative of a £60 fine and 3 penalty points on my licence.

So, on Tuesday I turned up at a small conference centre near a farm outside Coventry with about 15 other slightly embarrassed drivers for a four-hour workshop aimed at making us better drivers. Not slower drivers as such, because this course was aimed at people who had allowed themselves to break the limit rather than been caught for dangerously high speed. (That, in response to a question, was why there was nobody younger than 30 or so there; young drivers who get into trouble tend to be habitually fast drivers who disregard limits and there is a different and longer course for them.)

The course aimed to educate rather than shock, although we were shown some very effective Australian and New Zealand TV adverts about speed awareness - similar driving environment and same language but unfamiliar to everyone. Much of the course dealt with learning how to tell from your environment rather than just signs what the speed limit is, and to reinforcing the stuff we learned and forgot as new drivers about stopping distances. There were some good exercises in terms of guessing where the majority of injury-causing car accidents happen (mainly urban roads; motorways hardly at all) and in making us work through in groups the consequences of an accident scenario. The learning point I took away was the advice to drive in 3rd gear in 30 zones; as the instructor noted, this goes against what most of us were taught (I can recall my driving instructor tetchily telling me to get into 4th as we approached 30) but modern cars will quite happily drive in 3rd at 28 or so and you have more acceleration if you need it.

I felt it was an excellent course and my feedback at the end was that we should perhaps all pay a little more road tax in return for doing this course for free every 5 years on a compulsory basis. The only bad news was learning that there is just one car insurance company in the UK that, against ACPO advice, treats a Speed Awareness Course as equivalent to penalty points in assessing insurance: Admiral. Guess who we're insured with! I called them that afternoon and was told that my premium might be affected when we renew next year, in which case I'll be looking at alternative insurers.

The other course was an introduction to 3D printing. You might think I'd be the last person to need this, what with being one of the main UK exponents of the legal issues of this technology for the last few years. But despite having written a dissertation on 3D printers, an academic paper on them, given talks on them, been interviewed for newspapers about them and recently had an article printed about them I've never actually used one. So when I saw that local 'maker space' Black Country Atelier was running a how-to course it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

I thus spent four hours yesterday with five other course members being taken through the rudiments of SketchUp (which turns out to be available free for personal use) and preparing a simple design to be printed. We were advised to come up with something perhaps 4-5 cm across that could be printed fairly thin (i.e. quickly). I wondered what attimes_bracing would like and came up with this:



After rendering for printing, it looked like this; the hollow body has to be filled with a support framework to make the design rigid.



It took about 15 minutes to print on a circa £1500 Cubify printer. It's printed with a mesh substrate that peels off - this avoids problems in printing direct onto the print bed such as slight misalignment (one of the handy tips we picked up).

Comments

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

I saw a little video recently of someone 3D writing, a handheld tube that you squeeze to create writing in the air.

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Mmm, yes. I was recently lucky enough to be pulled over on the downhill stretch of the A31 through Four Marks... I think, by my calculation, I was 1 mph too fast for me to be offered a speed awareness course. However, since it would have been offered in Hampshire (which isn't where I live) and that would have therefore required me to arrange office cover for the day, I'd already decided to take the points; I've never had any others and G, the other named driver on my car insurance, has three points at this time also (although I think his may be expired by the time we next come to renew) -- I wouldn't have thought it would have made much difference. But I'd be interested to know how you get on with Admiral; I'm with Bell, separate brand of same people.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Annoyingly they did a 3D printing demo at work on Wednesday evening, I couldn't get to it because someone was in to collect our chemical waste and didn't finish packing it until well after the demo was over.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say - when you look for a quote you might want to try Carole Nash as brokers - they're pretty good for finding good deals on motorbike insurance and now do cars too.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I was caught for one of those courses a while back. The main comments from everyone on it were that no-one actually knew what the limits were on many types of road (and heaven help the Elbonian lorry driver). Just what does "national speed limit applies" actually mean in terms of numbers? Why do we have a system that seems to make it perversely complex to know what you ought to be doing? Why do Citroen Berlingo vans (in particular) have lower speed limits than other similar vans?

In my case, I was caught for driving under what I thought was a 40 limit but was actually 30, because the rules on speed limits for lit roads have changed since I learned to drive (no matter what the distance between the lampposts).

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Time for some refresher lessons? It's in the theory test. My driving instructor told me that if the road is lit and there are no signs telling you otherwise, the speed limit is 30.

Otherwise, if there's no indication, the speed limit is 60 on single carriageway roads and 70 on dual carriageways and motorways.

HGVs and PCVs have their own rules. As for the small vans, there are no special rules, so presumably what you are seeing is the policy of operators not the law.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Have they?

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Have they changed? I did the same course a few months ago, and I vaguely remembered the same things about the distance between the lights affecting the speed limit, but was told that that had never been the case and was just some sort of weird myth that was circulating for a few decades.

[unwholesome-fen.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a myth as such, though it may have been misinterpreted?

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1984/27/section/82

[drplokta]

Surely ACPO shouldn't have a position on car insurance renewal penalties -- it's supposed to be a purely commercial decision based on risk, and ACPO is not an actuarial organisation. Increased insurance premiums form no part of the punishment for motoring offences, and we have got to stop treating insurance premiums as part of the criminal justice system.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised at some of the things the ACPO have opinions and public positions on; in this particular case, they regard minor road traffic offences that cause no injury as a matter of education rather than punishment, and it follows that they disagree with others imposing punitive measures.

In addition to their point about education, the ACPO holds very strong opinions about extrajudicial punishment, especially where the state has chosen not to apply punitive sanctions, as this undermines the rule of law. Admittedly, Admiral's policy is a very mild example, and there might be (or not) an actuarial jusification for it; but you and I can think of some very worrying arguments and self-serving justifications that begin with "If it's OK for Admiral to do that, then..."

You might want to consider what opinions you will hold if health insurers started loading premiums on people who seek information on their HIV status, others who attend sexual health clinics regularly while healthy, or those who seek professional advice on (say) safer sex, or mental health issues, or lifestyle changes for better health. There are convincing actuarial and economic reasons why such prudent and sensible people should face higher premiums, or exclusion from insurance-based healthcare altogether; but you will hear opinions and public policies to the contrary from several professional bodies who are not in the insurance business; and you might presume that, like the ACPO, they have no business having an opinion on the rational commercial practices of an insurer.


Finally, you might consider this: car insurance is not a free choice in an open market, it is a requirement imposed by the law. The commercial practices of the private companies providing it are therefore a matter of legitimate concern to the professional bodies involved in law-enforcement, and it is arguable that they have a duty to express concern when these practices undermine public policy - or when these practices are, in their professional opinion, unfair, unjust, or not conducive to the public good - because their members must enforce the law obliging motorists to buy insurance whether the insurance companies are fair and rational, or not.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.

Left to their own devices insurers will rationally discriminate on all sorts of grounds - just as employers might when choosing who to employ. The government can either express an opinion on whether this is a good thing and attempt to persuade them not to do it, or actually legislate to prevent it.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

The points/course thing is also a financial "pay £80 and lose a day's pay/pay £60 and have 5 years boosted insurance premiums"

Did you know insurance companies increase premiums by 40% if you say you are unemployed (MoneyBox this week), will change 300% more to home policyholders on renewal than new customers, will up premiums if you enquire about making a claim and then choose not to, and try hard to weasel out of paying claims (Which? reported on the BBC website). Whenever I hear insurance company reps on the radio I start spitting feathers.

Never insure a loss you can afford to bear, unless legally obliged to.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Yes; I saw my Mum's home insurance renewal last year, and when I'd picked myself up off the floor told her that we were going online right away to look for a new quote. We cut 80% off her premium within hours.

I also avoid extended warranties, being familiar with the bathtub curve.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I also did a speed awareness course about six months ago and was also impressed with it. But I was pretty horrified by the other drivers! About half of us were "totally thought it was a 40 zone, my bad" and the other half were, "they put that camera there to trick you". Half the class swore blind that cameras were only there to make money, and there was one on the corner of so-and-so that they only put on during the week to catch you out and so on. I do not want to share the road with people who think it's their right to drive faster than the speed limit and that it's very unfair that there are cameras. In response to that, we were also told that cameras only go up where there's been a fatality, which was pretty shocking and also rather disappointing as I'd LOVE to get cameras on Trinity Way, but that would involve someone being killed, which would be non-ideal.

The other thing that shocked us all was that a dual carriageway is not two lanes in either direction, but a barrier / non-road between the two directions. Who knew?! I've been asking it around, and it appears that this is the immediate way to tell who has been on a speed awareness course and who hasn't.

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

I also only recently found out the proper definition of a dual carriageway, having previously thought, like you, that it meant 2 lanes in each direction. Can't remember how I found out, but it wasn't on a speed awareness course.

I've been driving for 24 years so I was a bit embarrassed at the misunderstanding.

[unwholesome-fen.livejournal.com]

Erm, I knew that, and I don't even drive.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

Can honestly say I've never been caught speeding. :-) And even when I took driving lessons back in 1974, I was terrified whenever the car went faster than a brisk walking pace, one of the reasons I abandoned learning to drive.

Mind you, for about five years after moving to Guildford, I'd receive notifications of parking fines every couple of months. Not addressed to me, just sent to my address.