Study reveals success of speed awareness courses

Speed awareness courses work – that’s the conclusion of newly published independent research.

Education courses for speeding drivers have a “long term impact” on driving behaviour, reveals a new study carried out by Professor Robin Martin (pictured), of Aston University Business School, Birmingham.

“A speed awareness course does improve people’s attitude and intention not to speed in the future,” said Martin, who headed the in depth 18 month research project into the impact of the course.

He said that it was “one of the best” designed studies to examine the long term benefits of speed awareness courses which were introduced by the Government across the UK to re-educate drivers’ and reduce road casualties as a more constructive alternative to fines or prosecution.

Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) researcher Cara Donald interviewed 1,311 motorists caught speeding from five police regions between November 2010 and April 2012. They had all opted to attend the course delivered by the not for profit TTC 2000, part of the TTC Group, the UK’s largest course provider.

Martin and Donald carried out a review of how people behaved before and after the course, how much they learned and their attitude to the course, including their future intention to positively modify their driving behaviour.

They tracked their views before attending the course, immediately after and up to six weeks later.

“The results clearly show that the speed awareness course led to reliable improvements in client’s attitude to speeding and importantly their intention not to break the speed limit,” said Martin.

“The benefit of the course occurred immediately and persisted several weeks after course delivery. The speed awareness course led to very reliable improvements in clients’ attitude towards not speeding.”
 
A total of 80 per cent said they would attend the course again because they knew they would learn something.
  
The research showed that people who blamed others for ‘their’ speeding and had a ‘mindset’ that they shouldn’t be on the course had a more negative view of the education and consequently were less likely to change their behaviour as a result.

People who had already amassed penalty points on their driving licence had a lower attitude to the course benefits. Older people had the best attitude, particularly older women. The amount of annual mileage did not have any significant impact on the results.