The idea has merit if the members genuinely wish to gain something out of it and make them safer drivers as well as faster.
1) IT could be argued that encouraging youngsters to behave by rewarding them is a good move if it keeps them out of Court and your car or house, but must be intensely frustrating to those who behave well yet would give their right arm to be involved in some of those activities.
2) I am employed by a certain Police force, but have also held a Driving Instructor's "Badge" for 21 years. There seems to be quite a wide gulf between Traffic Officers and "normal" Officers who have received "Response" training. Those who serve in the Traffic role, especially those in Tactical Vehicle Crime Units and are Escort specialists are among the most highly trained, safe, fast and capable drivers in the country, if not the world. This is reflected in the fact that those with "Response" training are limited by the Force to 20 mph over the prevailing speed limit. By "Response", I mean Astras,
Transits and the like.
3) I first joined the I.A.M. in 1978, but was very frustrated by some of the techniques which would have been apropriate for driving a Morris 8 or Vauxhall
Velox in the days of cross ply tyres, non-servo drum brakes and wipers that went slower, the slower you drove, but I didn't feel they were right for the heady technical heights of my Chevette with radials and servo disc brakes, not to mention synchromesh on all forward gears. So although the group have modernised many of their techniques, I can understand how, even today
young drivers may feel the I.A.M. is not for them. After packing it in, I enrolled on a scheme run by G.M.P. called the Citizen's Driving Scheme. This was run in the evening by Police Driving Instructors and I found it far more interesting than the I.A.M. and involved high speed driving on all kinds of roads and ended on the last night with a slalom course which was a right laugh. It was led by a Sergeant Instructor called Peter Livesey who had a highly tuned Mini Cooper S, and by the Cringe was he fast. My own Instructor
was P.C. Roger Taylor who took over as School Sergeant when Livesey moved
on or retired. On retirement, Roger went on to be an I.A.M. Examiner and I met him 10 years ago when I finally took my I.A.M. test. You can always learn
something even if it is only one piece at a time, as long as you think about it and not just accept everything you have been told. This is important for everything you learn about driving, as if you don't understand or agree, you should challenge it. Any instructor worth his badge whould be able to convince you why he or she is right.
4) Having survived half a century, alright 33 years of driving, I've done that by always assessing my driving and everytime I frightened myself, thought "That was a bit unpleasant" and tried not to do it again by thinking about what I'd done and thinking about how I could avoid it next time. I also went to the library and learnt about inertia, momentum and the laws of motion. I also read books by the likes of Stirling Moss and Jackie Stewart. Paul
Ripley writes some excellent books on high performance driving. In fact he runs driving courses where all his Instructors have track experience. My own cars in my younger days included a Chevette HS 2300, complete with obligatory four Cibie spots on the front and Castrol and DTV
stickers on the sides.
5) "Keen" drivers are sadly let down by, although not exclusively, boy racers. There are plenty of poor drivers from the excessively fast to the criminally irresponsible, from the terminally slow to the totally bewildered. Successive government's cowardice in not making it law to undergo some form of post test training, or even periodic re-testing (to a realistic standard) has left us with a nation of drivers for whom using a car is regarded as no more important than operating a washing machine. Every day you can see drivers who don't know how to join a Motorway, which lane to drive in, how fast to drive or how to leave it. But then, how often have you heard members of the media refer to the slow, middle and fast lanes. The speed limit in each is 70. As for country driving, instead of insisting on training the Highways Agency, or is it the Department for Transport, or Department of transport, or the Driving Standards Agency simply reduce the speed limit which reduces the skill level even further. People have become so wrapped up in their own self importance that they generally have no conception of speed limits in any given situation which leads to traffic wishing to drive at the speed limit being baulked by slower vehicles and others driving far too fast in built up areas. Signalling at roundabouts seems to have become a lost art and many drivers either negotiate bends too slowly or too fast. I recently took a motorway bend at a safe 70 in my Panda MJ only to find the car that had just overtaken me had braked so hard that I was now overtaking it on the left. A BMW M3 ferchrist's sake.
6) You have to guard against people joining with their own agendas, in as much as they sometimes take only what they thought was right about their own viewpoint in the first place and ignoring everything else that goes with it.
The I.A.M. once had to drop its policy of teaching members to straight-line bends after one man defended colliding with a car on the wrong sided of the road by saying the I.A.M. had told him to do it. I was for a time involved with the National Driver Improvement Scheme and it only worked if people genuinely got involved and improved. But they had to acknowledge there was something wrong with their driving in the first place. Some wouldn't drive at 70 on the Motorway because they were frightened of the speed, but would not otherwise seek help.
In principle this would be a great idea, but, and it's a big but, Pass + already provides a discount of 10% on insurance premiums, and most people take the course for that reason, so you have to be good at training them to make them realise what you are telling them is important and has merit. I would love to see a situation where everybody was better trained and more considerate. You don't have to drive fast, indeed people should drive at a speed that is commensurate with their driving abilities, but the important thing
perhaps, is that they should be aware of other traffic and drive in such a manner as to let them make progress as safely as possible which would reduce the frustration which causes so many casualties.
And you thought your post was long. Still, my motto has always been: "Why use 10 words when 10,000 will do.
