Oh Dear

Spent the afternoon in a Holiday Inn in Staines. Not some low-rent romantic tryst, but listening to a nice man from The AA telling me - and 23 others - why driving above the speed limit is an even worse idea than you originally thought.

The whole thing has left me not just £95 poorer, but slightly traumatised. I now feel like driving is such an unbelievably dangerous thing to do, I am quite terrified at the thought of ever doing it again!

We had these 'Ask the Audience'-type keypads to answer questions, and it was quite eye-opening! Not just what I got wrong (lots) but the variants in how people answered! Luckily it was anonymous, but one person thought that the speed limit on a single carriageway was 70mph, another thought it was 40mph. What happens when those two people are driving along the same road??? They were both wrong by the way! I gave a third, and also wrong answer!

The biggest gasp of all came when we were told that there are just 27 speed cameras in Surrey, but only 7 of them are operational! We had all been nabbed by just 7 cameras!

The whole thing took FOUR HOURS and I will make an unbelievable effort not to speed ever, ever again, for all sorts of reasons, that being the first, never mind the horrible and scary statistics and information we were given.

My most favourite moment came near the end, when we were discussing the recent debate over raising the motorway speed limit from 70mph to 80. A woman at the back suddenly perked up and said, 'Ooooh! Can we go at 80 on the motorways now? That's good news!'

It was so funny - three and a half hours of speed awareness training, and the only thing she had picked up on was the erroneous notion that it is now ok to go ten miles an hour faster than she should!


ETA I've been trying to email this image thru for nearly a week. I've now emailed it to my laptop, saved it and uploaded it from there. Hope it works this time as I've tried it every day since I took it on Monday and really hate seeing the gap there when I know I have a picture for that day!