My course experience

Convicted Driver Insurance

ZZTopWereHere

Well Known Member
Hi everyone,

Yesterday it was day 1 of my DD course, due to last for another couple of Saturdays.

I will update this thread at least with a final review, but the first impression is quite good. The class is fairly large, with, IIRC, 14 attendees, and all people are quite nice and with a wide variety of ages, ethnic backgrounds and characters. The only area where diversity is not significant is gender, as there is only one woman in the whole class.

The instructors are friendly, a woman with a background working with alcohol and drug addicts and a man who worked in the hospitality business since he was 15.

The initial topics were pretty much what I expected: units calculation, the famous 1 unit per hour rule, statistics with an emphasis on "morning after" arrests (indeed, two attendees were caught the morning after), a quiz to be repeated at the end to see how we will have improved our knowledge, all the different sizes of glasses, bottles and cans, and a report on how much everyone drank last week. We are now expected to keep track of how much units we drink each day.

The good news is that there was no display of videos with accidents, the bad news is that I expected much more interaction. There were a few occasions when we were invited to talk to our neighbour and we were allowed to ask questions, but it was much more of a "1-to-many" delivery than an interactive experience. Maybe the next couple of Saturdays will be a bit better in this regards.

Overall, anyway, I'm happy with this course, beyond the mere fact that it will reduce my disqualification.

Best regards,
Z
 
Hello again,

As promised here's my final review, after having received via email my certificate of completion during the week.

The second and third Saturdays of my course were definitely better than the first Saturday, in hindsight the main problem of the first day was that quite some time was devoted to introductions, setting expectations, listing rules, etc.

The most recurring topic is clearly the calculation of units and therefore the calculation of how long you have to wait before driving, either later on during the day or, more interestingly, the day(s) after. A wild party on a Friday night could well lead you to being legally unable to drive for the rest of the weekend.

Other topics covered were additional information for HROs, as there were 4/5 of them, how to deal with addictions and problem-solving when facing unexpected circumstances that might easily lead to drink driving.

Another recurring exercise was keeping a diary of daily units, which I have now established as an ongoing habit by downloading the iPhone app at https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/tools/app/.

Everyone had also to share the event leading to the conviction, and I could witness the whole spectrum of circumstances that you can also read in this forum, from a few people caught just when moving the car a few yards away to avoid a parking ticket the day after, to someone who drunk so much that, although he booked a B&B for a safe rest after a party, started to drive home with no apparent reason and then had an accident.

The most pointless part was the requirement to call insurance brokers to check for quotes. The instructors said that they have no vested interested in that (i.e. they don't get commissions) but that they wanted to validate their references to provide a good service to other convicted drivers. However, most people were still quite far from the date when they would drive again, someone was considering not driving anymore at all, and also my case with my wife having her second driving test soon is complex enough to make it impossible to have a definite quote at this early stage. Still, my "theoretical" quote was 1K£, which is better than what I feared.

Overall, my experience was positive and it would really be good to have more of this content in the standard theory to be learned before getting a driving licence.

Best regards,
Z
 
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