Category - Bad Drivers

This story is a little confusing if you read into it . It says that there is a scheme – The Blue Lamp Trust – running in Basingstoke aimed at improving the driving standards of company car drivers. That’s not a bad thing at all.

But the story’s author says clearly that when he went to take an assessment, the trainer immediately discovered that his driving licence was out of date – it had, in fact, expired the previous May. The article says:

The lesson started badly. A quick inspection of my driving licence revealed it expired in May, something I had been blissfully unaware of.

But then it goes on to report how the author got on on his assessment. It makes no mention of any delay while the licence was updated. The author explains how he subsequently “passed” the assessment. It is clear that the assessment went ahead in spite of the driver having no valid driver’s licence.

It raises a few questions, not least the one about what law allows you to drive on the roads if you don’t have a licence. One that expired almost a year ago is not valid.

Another question is how can someone who hasn’t got one, and who wasn’t aware of the fact his had expired, pass an assessment which by definition would require the person being assessed to know about this and deal with it?

Naturally, that then raises questions about the administration of the scheme (registered as a charity, it appears).

Unbelievably, Michelle Brannigan drove her 11-year old son to school and had a crash. She had been out drinking the night before and was nearly FOUR TIMES THE LEGAL LIMIT!

Now, it would be easy to find examples of where men have been jailed for non-injury crashes whilst DUI (driving under the influence) for a year, 10 months, six months, and so on. I’m sure there are longer sentences out there.

Brannigan was over the limit by 25% more than any of those male examples – in fact, she was so drunk it is a wonder she was able to breathe unaided – and yet she was jailed for a paltry 16 weeks.

She could have killed her son. She could have killed any number of other children. She was absolutely pissed during the school run (and I won’t mention the likely head start in the bad driving stakes that conveys). All those men in the examples above were completely uninvolved with the school run.

The only reason the idiot judge could have been so lenient in “one of the worst cases he had ever seen” was that she was female and a mother. He even considered suspending the sentence “because of [her] children”.

It’s unlikely she’ll be inside for anywhere near 16 weeks, either.

The night before, this “mother” – the word “unfit” is omitted in the article – had been drinking bourbon until 1 am in the morning. The judge insisted she is “a good mother”. Quite how his logic works is obviously not clear – answers on a postcard please.

The mitigating pleas are laughable when you consider Brannigan’s haggard face, clearly weathered by years of hard living. Apparently, it was all the fault of depression, the “neighbour from hell”, being a single mother with little support, and so on. All these things do is paint a picture of the kind of people and the localities involved – best summed up by the word “rough”.

It really is one rule for men, and another for women sometimes.

And this is exactly why society is declining and people drive, for example, the way they do. This “good mother” is one hell of a role model for her kids to emulate when they grow up. The script is already written for how they could easily turn out.

It’s interesting how certain individuals, groups, and organisations can dig the most bizarre meanings out of simple and honest facts if it fits in with their warped agendas.

I saw this article in the newsfeeds from This is Money, about what they call “pay as you drive” insurance. They refer specifically to the AA’s Drivesafe Box, which I commented on recently, pointing out that everyone who gets one starts off on 50 points, and this goes up or down depending on how fast you go, how sharply you turn corners, and so on.

They then add:

But drivers living in areas where there are many winding roads — such as the countryside — will have to work harder to keep a good score, as insurers view these areas as more risky.

That is total speculation. Technology is a lot smarter than many journalists – something many journalists appear to be blissfully unaware of.

But it isn’t from This is Money’s mouth that this rubbish originates. It is the Countryside Alliance [broken link] – that group “representing the countryside” – which advocates, among other things, the legalisation of tearing foxes apart with hounds for the perverted pleasures of country types, shooting anything that moves, using whippets to tear rabbits apart “to control them”, the defence of its members who illegally kill Hen Harriers (a bird of prey) because the Harrier kills Grouse (which they farm to shoot), and so on.

One can only guess at their take on Hare Coursing and Badger Baiting to “control” the populations of those particular animals.

I also seem to remember that they took up graffiti – painting slogans across roads and stuff – when the original fox-hunting ban was being pushed through. They certainly stuck a huge number of their flyers up illegally on traffic signs (you still see some of them around). And they are not particularly vocal about the blatant violation of that law by hunts around the country whose members still get their sexual kicks out of chasing and killing foxes.

So, on this current matter, they say that it is unfair to penalise people for living in rural areas!

…we are also concerned that rural roads can be tricky to drive, so this device should recognise and not penalise rural drivers unfairly.

It doesn’t. It won’t. It penalises people for driving like pillocks – you could spend 100% of your time on rural roads and still get a good rating out of the thing, even without having to change anything.

It seems like these village idiots have got it into their heads that the AA’s device, which monitors how you turn corners (among other things), actually penalises you for going round them. What it does is give you a black mark if you try and go round them on two wheels!

Now, if the Countryside Alliance’s members are wont to drive that badly – speeding and such like (which of course, we all know they aren’t) – then they deserve to pay higher insurance. But they aren’t going to get penalised just for driving on country roads or going round corners. And while we’re on the subject, I don’t recall the Countryside Alliance throwing a hissy fit over the Co-op’s Smartbox, which uses the same technology.

Mind you, assuming they have been quoted in context, the AA hasn’t helped itself – the article doesn’t quote them directly, but says that the AA “concedes rural dwellers could pay more.” I suspect there was much more to that in the interview.

These devices are aimed at boy racers. Just because they might also happen to be young farmers doesn’t make them immune to the effects of juvenile testosterone.