Safe Speed Forums

One of the more ineffective means by which those in power rule Britain is to punish undesirable behaviour without bothering to reward admirable behaviour.
An absence of positive reinforcement or incentives does not work in nature. There is no reason why it should work in social or civil affairs and, indeed, it does not.

Just as drivers get penalty points for driving badly, why should they not receive plus points for driving particularly well?
One could receive “plus points” to reduce his/her current penalty points total, or could even have plus points added to a clean licence to have something “in the bank”.
(As a minor version of this, some SCPs now offer “Speed Awareness” courses in lieu of penalty points, but they are limited in number, limited in application, and only come into play after the fact.)

Someone at this point will probably chime in that if you’re a good driver, you won’t need protection against penalty points. That might sound glibly correct, but we all know how easy it is to get points for yielding to an emergency vehicle at a red light, getting caught at a box junction when another car usurps your intended safe harbour, or harmlessly doing 65 in a 60 and being nailed by the camera van purposefully hidden behind the bushes.
Apart from the practical potential benefit of having plus points on one’s licence, having them would be a goal in itself, just as having a clean licence is now. The difference is that, today, to have a clean licence one does not need to do anything well, one only needs to stay under the speed limit.
Another benefit would be that, just as underwriters reward a history of no claims, one could expect them to reward drivers who evidence above-average care and skill.

How might this work? There are a number of things that could justify plus points, such as:

- extended history of driving with no offences,
- extended history of driving with no insurance claims,
- successful completion of advanced driving course or refresher course, and
- observations by marked or unmarked Trafpol of good lane discipline, spatial awareness, overtaking technique. Why couldn’t someone be pulled and rewarded for driving well?

This last element might be especially effective if vonhosen is correct that if drivers are conscious that an unmarked police car might be travelling near them (such as on M23), that will affect their driving.

Let’s give drivers something to aspire to, not just something to be afraid of. Surely there should be more to good driving than staying under the speed limit. The present system does nothing to recognise that.
Most people seem to lack both an awareness that driving can be better or worse, and an incentive to improve their own. A system that actually, in the real world, rewards good driving would help to achieve those things.



This proposal has probably been made many times before. I’m suggesting it here just because I cannot recall having read it previously.

I'm not keen on this idea per-se given than I do not think we should reward people for doing what any law abiding citizen should be doing as a matter of course.

A bank for offences? Hmmm...

Can I volunteer to go to prison now so I can build up enough credits to murder someone later?