The Highway Code to hell

I did a speed awareness course on Monday. For the uninitiated, you have the option of doing one of these if you’re caught speeding and want to avoid getting three points on your licence. It only lasts two and a half hours and there’s no test at the end, so it’s a no-brainer, although you have to do it again if you’re spotted playing on your phone at the back. I’ve never heard of anyone choosing the three points instead.

Like most people forced to undergo this humiliation, I was convinced I had nothing to learn. We all know about the laws of motion: the faster you’re going, the longer it takes to stop. And, inevitably, I found myself silently correcting the poor English of the two trainers. It’s either ‘more safe’ or ‘safer’, not ‘more safer’, and what are ‘road signages’, for Pete’s sake? But they won me over — and, I suspect, the other 12 arrogant ne’er-do-wells in the basement of Ealing’s Crowne Plaza hotel — by quizzing us about the meaning of different road signs in the Highway Code. I suspect they deliberately include this at the beginning to persuade their reluctant students that there’s actually a good deal about speed restrictions they aren’t aware of.

For instance, did you know that the meaning of the ‘national speed limit applies’ sign varies according to which part of the United Kingdom you’re in? The maximum speed for HGV drivers on single carriageways is 10mph lower in Scotland and Northern Ireland than in England and Wales.

Maximum speeds also vary according to what sort of vehicle you’re driving, as the owner of a Transit van discovered to his astonishment. No sooner had we finished laughing at him — ‘No wonder you’re here, mate’ — than we were introduced to the ‘street light rule’, whereby a national speed limit of 30mph applies to all roads with street lights, including dual carriageways.