Jayne Dowle: High time to ask questions about the rules of the road

When I wrote to South Yorkshire Police to request a place on the course rather than take the hit of three points on my licence and a £60 fine, I pointed out that the signage on this particular road was especially ambiguous.

Perhaps by lunchtime today, I will understand a little more about why it is necessary to drive quite so pedantically on a rural road with no sharp bends.

I drive thousands of miles a year, and I know I am careful. Until this incident, I haven’t had any points for seven years. And that was shortly after we moved back to Yorkshire from London and I still hadn’t come to terms with the heady freedom of being able to move at more than 20mph in a built-up area.

I can’t afford to ever lose my licence. For various reasons, I’m the chief driver in the family. I also understand that speed kills. I have two small children and get very annoyed with the thoughtless road-hogs who zoom past their school at 40mph. And much as I loathe them, I am forced to respect speed cameras.

Anyone who takes the A637 between Barnsley and Huddersfield several times a week, soon learns to cower before their ever-watchful eyes, even though I do give them a scowl to make myself feel better. When you drive as much as I do, it’s the little things that keep you going.

So I feel a bit annoyed and slightly rebellious this morning. My husband has already warned me to behave myself and not ask awkward questions. He is worried that if it’s possible to fail the course, then I will, simply by being obtuse.

But I am genuinely looking forward to finding out more about why the speed limits are what they are, and why the police are seemingly so obsessed with punishing us drivers for what are often minor infringements.

This comes as the number of people caught out by speed cameras plummets to fewer than a million for the first time in a decade.

If fewer of us are getting caught, and, therefore revenue, from speed cameras is dropping, is that why it is necessary to charge more than £80 per head for the pleasure of four hours in a classroom with a load of other wayward drivers?

Put simply, if speed cameras really worked, then they wouldn’t be any need for these courses, would there? We would have all learned our lessons already.

I have often wondered, as I have perambulated my way through residential 20mph zones and negotiated the car through endless 50mph roadworks on the motorway, whether speed cameras are teaching me to drive more safely – which, essentially, means more slowly and obediently – or is their purpose for something else entirely? Especially because I was caught out by a hand-held gun I had no warning about.

If I truly was a safe driver, then I would have anticipated the speed limit and acted accordingly. Mmm. That’s just one of the many questions I want answers to today.

Here’s another one. Why, when you are driving along, obeying the advertised speed limit, does someone come up behind you and try to force you to go faster?

I wasn’t going to generalise, but it is usually a man. In a van. I would like a police officer to tell me what the correct form is in these situations. Do you slow down even more to prove the point, bearing in mind that a “limit” of 30mph is just that, not a recommendation, or do you pull up suddenly, get out and bang on their van window (as I have been tempted to do on more than one occasion)? If it’s multiple choice, perhaps neither of the above, but you see what I mean.

And why, when you are driving at a steady 70mph on the motorway, does someone always zoom past you at 90, causing you to swerve and potentially cause an accident? And why is it that there never seems to be a motorway patrol car around when that happens, yet you see them sitting there like hawks waiting for some hapless driver to slip four miles over the limit in a contraflow?

You can see why my husband is a little concerned this morning. But the best way to learn is to ask questions. And you certainly can’t get much sense out of a yellow box on a stick.