. Now that's what I call a fitted blind. It was the only interesting thing in the room where the 'Speed Awareness Course' I've just attended was held. That's 4 hours of my life I'll never get back.
Speed Awareness lol! U should be banned at your doddering old age Full Stop! (valuable those 4 hours to U I spose!)
speed awareness course always seems a stupid name to me, I am aware of just how fast I am going I never ride along thinking I am doing 40mph, while really doing 3x that? Cool blind though how much do they charge you for being there looking blinds for 4 hours, never done one? curious
Better than 3 points? and OMG 6 MPH over. think of the children. I bet it was not past a school or hospital just in a area where it should be a 40? lots of areas like this my way. Plus lowering limits of roads from 60 to 40
I await the notification for 3 points that should drop through the door any day now, think i was doing 60 in a 40, again in the car.... Ive already maxed out my speed awareness course...
Nick u git. trust you to put this up, Guess what!!! No not me but my 81yo gran just got done for 38 in a 30. 60 plus years of driving and never a speeding fine. She just asked me what have I got to do. told her she would be daft taking the fine and points when she can have a awareness course. I told her that she will go, pay for the delight of 4 hours of being told speeding is bad. that 1 MPH over the limit kills small rabbits and children. Think of the children and just do and say what they want. Speeding kills my ass. in the right place there is little risk. But hay ho hoping she learns to keep her eyes open for £££ enforcement cameras over the next 60 years of driving
I got one of them lovely invites to a SAC (speed awareness course) a couple of years back. Got caught by a roadside van, didn't slow down fully as it was on the other side of the road and I didn't want the van behind in my car boot, well that's my excuse. Anyway I attended the course on my Blade as it was in town and easier to park, parked right outside the door. You could see the look on the "preachers" face as I pulled up, hooligan biker and probs be dead before he reaches 30. Anyway I remove my lid to reveal a greying 52 year old, must have surprised him a little. He then proceeds to say I had been leaning over a bit hadn't I? My tyres were new and had fat chicken breasts let alone chicken strips, cheeky fecker. With that I spent the next 4 hours picking holes in his sermon. Grrrr
You know how criminals seem to make the EU laws work for them in this country could we jump on this band wagon and say this constant targeting by the police with radar guns is an infringement on our human rights as we enjoy the machines that we have worked so hard to afford and maintain? Probably a flawed argument but tempting to look into as that would be funny and nothing better than stuffing it to the bacon....
Did one a few years ago. They did a bit where they showed a photo of a village for a second or two and then asked what people saw. Well one bloke went on for several minutes listing things like road markings, signs, driveways, in fact so much that the "instructors" were having to double check the picture on the laptop. Eventually they stopped him and asked him if he rode a motorbike. He said yes, they praised the observation skills of motorcyclists, to which he said it was f@@k all to do with riding a bike and that the picture showed his village and he lived about 100 yards away from where it was taken We all pi$$ed ourselves and the instructors looked somewhat embarrassed
. The course I attended was given by two women who claimed to be IAM instructors. They took it in turns to lecture us 21 miscreants (13 of whom, I was surprised to note, were also women) on the dangers of exceeding walking pace. Though I think I was the oldest there almost all of us were 'getting on' and a few looked like a Zimmer-frame would have been a more appropriate mode of transport. Other than myself there was one other biker present. I was the only one who arrived by motorcycle and when it was over, on my way home (from Ledbury), I got blasted by an horrendous thunder-storm for my trouble. Whilst there, I couldn't rid my head of the notion that I was being subjected to an unimaginative session of 'brain-washing' by two dimzoids who had passed-out of the 'mind laundry' with flying colours. At one point I asked the lecturer to speak up as I couldn't hear her above the 'hum'. She said she couldn't hear any 'hum', but I could. I said, "Oh, OK, it must be my tinnitus then." but actually I knew it was the sound of George Orwell spinning in his grave. Again, when they were both present I asked: Did they never exceed the 'speed-limit' themselves and if so when was the last time. Needless to say they evaded the question. When I asked how it was that, at that very moment, hundreds of German motorist were whizzing along at over twice our legal limit (and then some) and quite within their rights to do so, We were told that, 'Time is short. We can't address individual issues and we must get on'. A fellow 'detainee' asked what happened to the £85.00 fee we'd all paid to TTC Group, the course provider for offenders caught in the area policed by the West Mercia constabulary and, as I recall it was as follows:- £5.00 payment fee (In effect you get charged for paying!) £45.00 to the force in who's area the offense took place £35.00 to TTC Group. A non-profit organization. When you add it all up at, say, 20 'hostages' per course = £1700.00 X 2 course a day =£3400.00 X 5 Days per week = £17.000.00 Bearing in mind these courses are being held at ten or more places over the entire country the phrase, 'A nice little earner' springs to mind. Worth remembering that some of us would have suffered a loss of earnings too. Other than being metaphorically beaten over the head with a (very thick) copy of 'The Highway Code' for not being able to describe the outline of a 'Give Way' sign I, and my fellow 'crims', came away none the wiser. Now, if they'd have used our fees to hire (for instance) a skid pan for the day and let us loose on it we may have learned something useful about at least one aspect of modern motoring. Now, obviously, I'm not anti road safety but this was specifically a 'Speed Awareness' course and as a fellow poster has already pointed out, as Fireblade riders, speed is something I think we're already 'aware' of. It seems to me now, that every time I journey over a fairly familiar route, another speed limit has been posted or extended further along my favourite 'B' road. My own view is that, with the ever growing encroachment of restriction zones, I can see one day soon they will all coalesce into a blanket, nation-wide '40 limit' super zone. Then we'll all be anti-social deviants, meeting friends, old and new on SACs all over the country. Finally, on my way home, and before the deluge, some of my route was along the Leominster bypass, part of which consists of a mile(+) well surfaced straight with no junctions. You enter it by way of a long, sweeping 100 MPH curve so it would be very easy to 'Do a German' and 'max-out' a 'blade. You exit at a traffic island to enter the town itself. Just as I made the turn off the island I noticed, on my left, an un-marked BMW saloon in front of which stood an officer writing out a ticket for some poor bloke in a works van. He'd obviously tailed him down the by-pass before 'pulling' him. I thought SH*T! That could have been me. How embarrassing would that have been? Busted on the way home from a Speed Awareness Course. Live Fast; Die Old. Nick.
