Start DDRS course monday

Convicted Driver Insurance
@price1367 is the expert here but the reaction seems to be almost universally positive. Remember the trainer isn't out to humiliate you or condemn your actions.

Everyone on the road tends to overestimate their abilities and underestimate the risks and to be honest we could all do with going on a similar course every few years anyway. In fact in the news the other day they were talking about offering a course for drivers on how to drive safely around cyclists, with a discount of your insurance once taken, so it could well happen soon.
 
They may be strangers, but you all have something in common.... a drink driving conviction!
There will be up to 15 people on the course (there can be up to 20 if there are 2 trainers, but at TTC we always work with just one. The embarrassment of drink driving stems a lot from what you think other people are going to feel about it. So that doesn’t count on the course because you are all in the same boat. In fact the opportunity to talk to others openly about how you felt, knowing you will not be judged, can be very therapeutic.
I have run courses myself for over 15 years, with in excess of 3000 people on them and the total number of people I have excluded for bad behaviour (including 1 being drunk!) is 4. They all start off nervous like you, but by the end of the course people quite often exchange phone numbers to stay in touch, and then there was the course where they all invited me across the road to Wetherspoons for a drink after the course ended.... but I had to remind them that ONE of us was driving home!
 
To wetherspoons to celebrate completing a DD course... got to be the most British thing I have heard in a while :LOL:
 
Can you please tell me if i got a three year ban from feb 2017 when can i apply and drive again i finish the course 13th dec ... life has been so hard without a car as i live in the middle of no where lol ..i was told by the courts to complete by March 2019
 
The court should have told you exactly how much you get off the ban - normally 25%. The course provider tells the court you have completed the course, and assuming you need a medical the DVLA will write to you 90 days before your ban finishes (56 days if no medical).

In theory medical enquiries will complete within the 90 days but you can't drive until they are complete even if this is beyond the actual ban.
 
Don't worry about it. It's very interesting, and nobody is there to judge you. I just did day 1. A wide range of different people. It is much more factual than the DID program that you might have to do. Much quicker paced too. We did more in 4.5 hours than the DID has done in 3 weeks of 2.5 hours.
 
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I have done 2 days already - Wednesday will be the final day.

It's a very mixed group - day one we had to tell of the circumstances of our conviction, what we blew and what our ban was. Lots of wide ranging stories, but I must say it was nice to be open and honest about it and I only told my parents. Day 1 was 4.5 hrs.

Day 2 was a whole day. Went over stuff from day 1 and did more calculations of units. We wore 'beer' goggles, which were supposed to be about 47 reading. Though we all agreed that it was much more than that. It is a good class, can be therapeutic too.

Just remember to take photo i.d with you and a calculator if you don't have one on your phone. For all 3 days!

Also, try to make some friends and engage in the course - it can help time go faster.

Be early! Anyone late is not admitted - which happened on day 1. On day 2, someone did not turn up so could not complete the course. Shame, as he had paid for it so won't get his money back.

Next week I think will be the 'hard' hitting stuff of what could have potentially happened. I am glad to have done it, though I am looking forward to finishing it
 
The beer goggles one is an interesting one. We use similar ones at work to simulate different medical conditions.

When you are able to instantly take them on and off then you can't believe anyone could actually drive like that. However, what you don't realise is that given time to get used to it your brain is actually unhelpfully good at filling in the gaps and making you think you've seen everything when actually you are impaired.

To briefly explain, human vision is still set up from hunter gatherer days to prioritise movement and following movement because movement = prey = dinner tonight. That's in contrast to something like a rabbit, which is good at looking across a panorama.

Because of that when we have to do something like scan a junction our eyes jump and take in a few individual images, called saccades. In our mind we see it as a panorama simply because our brain stitches the images together. Where there are blanks, especially at the edges of the images, it just fills in what it expects to find there.

Thus you can drink drive and feel absolutely fine, because your brain is overcompensating to give you apparent 100% vision. If there was the option to instantly sober up you'd be able to compare. It's also why most of us have had a "where did they come from" moment whilst driving even when sober.

It's a phenomenon studied at length by fighter pilots, but it's useful knowledge for all drivers simply because doing two full observations when approaching s junction means it is much less likely you will lose something important when your brain fills in the gaps
 
Last day tomorrow....really enjoyed it....does open your eyes!!

Tutor very nice and patient...made some friends :)

I do recommend these courses if your looking to do one....plus its 25 per cent of your ban

Maybe it'll open your eyes too?
 
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