Driving without seat belt - Online course or £100 Fixed penalty?

urbanlegend179

I forgot to put on my seat belt the other day and was pulled over by police. I recently got the letter in the post giving me an option to take an online course or to accept a fixed penalty of £100. 

What would be the best choice? Do I have to declare fixed penalty notices on future insurance applications? 
I have zero criminal record and zero driving record. I am worried this might end up on some kind of record? Or am I worrying for nothing?

Browntoa

Take the course .

neilmcl

How much is the course? Personally I'd pay the fine as it's non-endorsable offence and you wont need to declare it to your insurer I believe.

Car_54

This offence is non-endorable, so if you accept the FP there will be no points on your licence.

As for declaring it, you need to read your policy to see whether you need to declare it mid-term, and read carefully the questions on any future applications. If you do have to declare it, you'll probably find that the systems can't cope with an offence without an endorsement code, and the insurers won't care about it.

DUTR

urbanlegend179 said:

I forgot to put on my seat belt the other day and was pulled over by police. I recently got the letter in the post giving me an option to take an online course or to accept a fixed penalty of £100. 

What would be the best choice? Do I have to declare fixed penalty notices on future insurance applications? 
I have zero criminal record and zero driving record. I am worried this might end up on some kind of record? Or am I worrying for nothing?

Even when I had my 1978 Triumph Dolomite, there was a seatbelt warning light which was difficult to ignore, many modern cars have a chime, my current car will not move unless the seatbelt is used.
After all that irrespective of the car, I cannot think of a situation (even reversing) where I feel comfortable without the seat belt in use.

Supersonos

There are ways to disable the chime.  If you put the seatbelt in and out 8 times on my car, it disables the chime.

Alternatively, put a spare buckle in the catch.

Scrapit

Supersonos said:

There are ways to disable the chime.  If you put the seatbelt in and out 8 times on my car, it disables the chime.

Alternatively, put a spare buckle in the catch.

Eight times? That's pretty much saying its easier to put the belt on.

Supersonos

Scrapit said:

Supersonos said:

There are ways to disable the chime.  If you put the seatbelt in and out 8 times on my car, it disables the chime.

Alternatively, put a spare buckle in the catch.

Eight times? That's pretty much saying its easier to put the belt on.

Not sure I get your point.  My point is, there are ways to permanently turn off the chime if one so wishes.

[Deleted User]

Scrapit said:

Supersonos said:

There are ways to disable the chime.  If you put the seatbelt in and out 8 times on my car, it disables the chime.

Alternatively, put a spare buckle in the catch.

Eight times? That's pretty much saying its easier to put the belt on.

Seems to be more common to just buckle the seatbelt and then sit on top of it to avoid the chimes

Biggus_Dickus

OP;

What is your online course actually called?

The pre-covid19  ‘Speed Awareness Courses’ took about 4hrs to complete and cost circa £90 for the course fee;....coupled with travel to and from the venue that was a fair chunk of time out of anybody’s day.

The recently introduced ‘online Speed Awareness Course ‘ only takes 2.5 hrs so I assume (perhaps wrongly!)  that your online course will be no longer than that and cost about the same.

You options are:

Complete the £90/2.5hr online course at some fixed point in the near future, learn from it, and move on.......or......pay the £100 fine and confront any future issues that may arise from that fine,...if indeed there are any issues.

If I was you I’d take the online course,...but I’m not you.

 

Scrapit

Supersonos said:

Scrapit said:

Supersonos said:

There are ways to disable the chime.  If you put the seatbelt in and out 8 times on my car, it disables the chime.

Alternatively, put a spare buckle in the catch.

Eight times? That's pretty much saying its easier to put the belt on.

Not sure I get your point.  My point is, there are ways to permanently turn off the chime if one so wishes.

My point is quite simple: its easier to put the belt on. Alot easier. The manufacturer is basically saying put your belt on and if you must take it off its going to be difficult.