I ATTENDED a Speed Awareness Course in Burnham this week. Anyone who knows that I endured a six month ban under the totting up procedure two years ago may be appalled to learn that I was recently caught doing 36 mph in Wycombe.

But with all the best intentions I had after that experience, I still erred.

All of the other 27 attendees at the training session felt aggrieved at worst or unlucky at best at the individual circumstances of their being caught by cameras or radar traps.

I suspect most of us thought that four hours of being told how naughty we were would be a bitter pill worth enduring only because no points were being added to our licences.

Thanks to the skills of the excellent presenter and the strength of the message, I suspect that most of us left much better informed and resolved to be safer drivers, especially the woman who admitted that on the motorway she just sat in the middle ‘cruising’ lane and never moved. She was genuinely astonished to learn the error of her ways.

I was shocked at the lack of knowledge within that small group of speed limits, road markings and stopping distances, although I doubtless surprised others with my lack of knowledge in other areas.

I would have liked to take away a copy of the presentation to assimilate and share it with my family. For some reason, that was not possible. I would urge Thames Valley Police to make the content available (either on line or on paper) to those who have completed the course. I also asked if the course was available to non-offenders for a fee. I would gladly have paid for my daughters to attend it. The £95 fee would be cheap if it saved their or another person’s life.

The huge impact of tyres with reduced, although legal, tread depth on stopping distances and grip in the wet was something that I had never before fully appreciated.

I intend to take all the family cars into our tyre supplier on a regular basis rather than rely on the occasional quick look that had been my previous custom.

If there was one abiding message however, it was that if we all drove at speeds that enabled us to simply stop within the distance we could see as clear ahead, accidents and deaths would be massively reduced.