Warning! Accused of leaving driver awareness course early! You can avoid this! Use this simple tip

WEASELL

Car_54 said:

WEASELL said:

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Many thanks, That is very interesting information. I will be making information requests ,under the data protection 2000 act in the next few days and This is the type of information I need.
Also it’s great to think perhaps there are more safeguards for the rest of the country.

Hi. You need to be aware that there is absolutely no legal basis for these courses. They are offered and operated entirety at the police’s discretion, to give you an opportunity to avoid any other action.

It follows that if they decide you haven’t complied in some way, there is no  mechanism to appeal, so things revert to fixed penalty or court. Again, that is essentially at their discretion.

Car_54 said:

WEASELL said:

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Many thanks, That is very interesting information. I will be making information requests ,under the data protection 2000 act in the next few days and This is the type of information I need.
Also it’s great to think perhaps there are more safeguards for the rest of the country.

Hi. You need to be aware that there is absolutely no legal basis for these courses. They are offered and operated entirety at the police’s discretion, to give you an opportunity to avoid any other action.

It follows that if they decide you haven’t complied in some way, there is no  mechanism to appeal, so things revert to fixed penalty or court. Again, that is essentially at their discretion.

Oh dear! That makes perfect sense given the phone call I received from them today. 

There is other evidence I was there to the end, but there was no interest in them hearing it at all.
I completed the online feedback at the end of the course, but no, apparently police not interested in this evidence.
How would you complete online feedback if you were not there at the end.
Depressing!

WEASELL

So let’s loop back to the start and the whole point of this post.

Tell your friends to take screenshots towards the end of online training or this could be them.

Aretnap

Car_54 said:

WEASELL said:

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Many thanks, That is very interesting information. I will be making information requests ,under the data protection 2000 act in the next few days and This is the type of information I need.
Also it’s great to think perhaps there are more safeguards for the rest of the country.

Hi. You need to be aware that there is absolutely no legal basis for these courses. They are offered and operated entirety at the police’s discretion, to give you an opportunity to avoid any other action.

It follows that if they decide you haven’t complied in some way, there is no  mechanism to appeal, so things revert to fixed penalty or court. Again, that is essentially at their discretion.

I'm not sure that it's correct that there is no mechanism to appeal whatsoever. While speed awareness courses don't have any special status in law, it would seem to be an abuse of process for the police to promise not to prosecute the OP of he completed the course, then to prosecute him anyway when he had completed it. If the court is convinced that an abuse of process has taken place then it should halt the prosecution.

The problem is that it is quite a high bar to establish an abuse of progress - I think the onus would be on the OP to prove that the police's decision was wholly unreasonable, as opposed to just questionable or even incorrect. It's quite a complicated legal position so if his only evidence that he was there until the end is his own say so then unless the point of principle is so important that he is willing to risk a lot more than £100 over it, the pragmatic thing to do is probably to accept the fixed penalty m

WEASELL

Aretnap said:

Car_54 said:

WEASELL said:

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Car_54 said:

It may be worth noting that Dorset is unique. It is the only force in E and W that runs its own courses, not part of the NDORS scheme, so the OP’s experience may not be typical.

Many thanks, That is very interesting information. I will be making information requests ,under the data protection 2000 act in the next few days and This is the type of information I need.
Also it’s great to think perhaps there are more safeguards for the rest of the country.

Hi. You need to be aware that there is absolutely no legal basis for these courses. They are offered and operated entirety at the police’s discretion, to give you an opportunity to avoid any other action.

It follows that if they decide you haven’t complied in some way, there is no  mechanism to appeal, so things revert to fixed penalty or court. Again, that is essentially at their discretion.

I'm not sure that it's correct that there is no mechanism to appeal whatsoever. While speed awareness courses don't have any special status in law, it would seem to be an abuse of process for the police to promise not to prosecute the OP of he completed the course, then to prosecute him anyway when he had completed it. If the court is convinced that an abuse of process has taken place then it should halt the prosecution.

The problem is that it is quite a high bar to establish an abuse of progress - I think the onus would be on the OP to prove that the police's decision was wholly unreasonable, as opposed to just questionable or even incorrect. It's quite a complicated legal position so if his only evidence that he was there until the end is his own say so then unless the point of principle is so important that he is willing to risk a lot more than £100 over it, the pragmatic thing to do is probably to accept the fixed penalty m

Such useful information.
At the risk of sounding pathetic I post my sad story below.
please comment if you think it stands any chance at all ?

On the 12th October I logged into the Driver awareness course.

I had a great deal of trouble logging in. 

I called police ticket helpline and they sent me a special log in link.

I have a screen shot of my phone bill with detailed evidence of this.

The training had tech issues and took just under 30 minutes to fully start.

I had no Wi-Fi at My home. The start time on the course was early so I couldn’t go to the library. My friend was going out but said come and use my house. 

I didn’t want to be in her house alone. I said I really would prefer to sit in my car next to your router and do my training , so she said ok. 

We did a dummy run a week prior, to make sure my iPad worked ok with her Wi-fi and me in my carI

The Wi-Fi was a bit patchy so I got out of my car, removed a child’s car seat from the back of my vehicle, sat in it and enjoyed sitting in the sun, next to the room with her router, as I did my training.

I do remember a substantial way through the training there was a video featuring a blue car that I couldn’t see due to tech problems, ( video just didn’t show on my screen) but I listened carefully to the information given.

I used online chat all the way through the training. I also completed the feedback at the end. 

Had I been contacted about this problem in a reasonable timescale I would have been able to remember a huge amount of detail about the latter part of the training.

Certainly two points covered later on in the training were the white lines showing a hazard,  and also the tip of talking out loud about what you see, the tutor mentioned this was a good technique to fight tiredness.

At 11.32 I sent a photo of the car seat outside my friends house to her on WhatsApp. Thanking her, and mentioning the training had finished. The photo clearly shows the time and the place.i have the time and dated photo available.

Kim_13

I don’t know of anyone personally who has had the problem, though I had heard anecdotally that dropped connections/other people entering the room while the training was going on would land people with 3 points. It might be that when the video didn’t show on your end, it appeared on their end as though you had left early. The trainer will report if they believe that someone is not engaging with the course, and may have taken a dim view of a course being done in a car (I believe you are on webcam throughout.) Did you remove the car seat before you logged into the course or after? The latter would be a big no no. Were you late to join the course due to the log in issues? After being passed through a few people, maybe that became left early - as you wouldn’t have been there for the whole time. It seems they don’t have to explain why they believe you left early and are just not going to bother. 

I would not consider doing an online course unless I had WiFi and a cellular backup (so tablet probably) and recently persuaded someone to attend in person as I knew they were not the best with computers and would be at risk of swearing at the computer / asking for help if it didn’t behave the way they expected (and thus at risk of paying for the course and still getting the fine and points.) If I ever take one, I will be sure to keep a screenshot but given that Dorset Police have dismissed the points you have made, maybe they wouldn’t even have taken notice of that. 

They probably won’t have any sympathy with it was early so the library wasn’t open - they will say that with an online course you have a greater choice of slots and should have made arrangements accordingly. (Though a friend of my father’s recently did a course following an offence in Dorset months after the offence as they had such a backlog, so I could well understand that you had no other option.)

3 points will cost more than £100 in increased insurance premiums - possibly many times that with the cost of insurance having increased generally. I wouldn’t want to take it lying down, but don’t know what to suggest. If you had waited as long to return their NIP as they have to contact you, you’d be looking at failure to furnish charge. 

ontheroad1970

A single 3 pointer bog standard SP30 often makes little or no difference to premiums at all.

elsien

I did the online course with another provider, and they were quite keen to ensure that people were paying attention throughout. 

At one point, I was playing around with the backgrounds and was asked to turn the background off, presumably to evidence that it was no one else there with me.
Why were you using the chat rather than a microphone?I also wonder if your video problems are part of the reason. Doing it from outside with patchy Wi-Fi, possibly wasn’t one of your better choices.

A photo sent to a friend proves nothing at all about participation in a course.

The_Unready

WEASELL said:

Because also you notice that 20 mile per hour speed limits are going up everywhere. As soon as the dust settles there will be cameras put up. Then thousands and thousands of people will be milked for money like a heard of jersey cows. 

There's an easy way to avoid being 'milked'. I'm sure you're aware of it, so I won't insult you by mentioning it here.

force_ten1

WEASELL said:

So let’s loop back to the start and the whole point of this post.

Tell your friends to take screenshots towards the end of online training or this could be them.

you have clearly stated that "There is other evidence I was there to the end, but there was no interest in them hearing it at all." so if they are not interested in the evidence you have to prove you were there then what's the point of screenshots? 

bluelad1927

Maybe change the title of this thread to

"WARNING do no attend driver awareness course whil sat in back seat of car outside friends house using dodgy WiFi connection"

Not sure who you are warning as I for one don't know of anybody who would consider doing such a thing