Traffic School
I’m one of the mellowest drivers I know. I don’t drive particularly fast and I follow the rules of the road, but recently I ran a red light and got caught. My first mistake was allowing myself to get distracted and instead of slamming on the brakes, I coasted through the intersection a hair too late. My second mistake was rushing to put my new license plates on my new car.
I was caught by Technology. I blew it in one of San Mateo County’s three high tech intersections. A couple of weeks after the incident I was mailed a lengthy document that included three photos from three angles documenting my crime: A close up of my license plate, a shot from behind that showed me just barely entering the intersection while the light was red, and a shot that showed my face happily plowing through the intersection.
I kicked myself for rushing to put on my shiny new license plates as soon as they arrived from the DMV the just two days before the incident, and I kicked myself again for failing to buy those reflective license plate frames that make it impossible for the camera lens to read the plate. I was caught.
It has been some time since I’ve received a moving violation and a lot has changed.
I was stunned that the cost of my crime seems to have significantly outpaced inflation and even the cost of oil. I expected a fine of $50 – $75 but figured that maybe by now it might be as high as $150. I was stunned that San Mateo County charges $380 for running a red light (whether caught by camera or cop)!
I wrote out my check and, as I’ve done in the past, I checked the box indicating that I wanted to attend traffic school.
I’ve been to traffic school at least twice in my life. The first time I took the class (circa 1978) was in a Santa Monica school gymnasium and it felt a lot like prison with movies. It was taught by an off duty cop who seemed to enjoy making the prisoners feel sub-human. The second time (circa 1989) there were no movies, but it was held in a doughnut shop and taught by a friendly fat guy. I munched on fattening food and even managed to read my book and doze a bit during the 8-hour class. This second time through it was still prison-like, but much less painful.
Seventeen years later the world is much different. Technology gave me my ticket and technology would now teach me what I needed to know in traffic school. The San Mateo Superior Court mailed me a list of approved traffic schools. The list had only about 15 “classroom” schools and about 45 “home study” schools. I opted for home study.
With little more than a name to work with from the list, I considered ClearMyTicket.com, All Video Traffic School, Easy Fast Cheap Traffic School, California Jammin’ Traffic School and finally settled on WarpSpeedHomeStudy.com. For $18.95 I would have access to a self-paced on-line course from the comfort of my own home.
Wearing my comfortable clothes and sitting in my comfortable chair with my laptop warming my lap, I was optimistic that in 2006 the fine was dramatically more painful than I remembered, the punishment would be significantly less painful.
The course began by explaining the on-line ground rules. They would present material to read and absorb on-line and then offer quizzes at the end of each section. While faster readers might complete it more quickly and slower readers might need more time, the course was timed for 8 hours. I began reading.
The course was broken into 6 sections and the quizzes were 10-question multiple-choice tests. If I got 8 correct I could move on. If I got less than 8 correct I would go back and review the content before retaking the test. I could retake it as often as I needed to. After the 6th section I would be given a final exam where I would need to correctly answer 20 of 25 questions.
I started reading. It only took a paragraph or two for me to get bored. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as fun as I thought. I started to skim. A couple of interesting things here and there caught my eye…things like how we die on the roads, but overall reading was as boring as sitting in a classroom format. It took me about 15 minutes to get to the end of section one. I congratulated myself at being well ahead of proscribed pace and clicked the NEXT button.
I was told that the DMV required a security question before I could take my first quiz. The security question was something like “The word of the day is _______” and it gave me four choices. Reluctantly I went back to my reading material grumbling that simply skimming the material wouldn’t work.
I re-read the information about the security question. They were required by law to randomly insert a “keyword” somewhere in the document. It could not be highlighted in anyway so that I would be forced to read every line. Damn! Then it occurred to me that there might be a high tech solution to this problem.
The Internet Explorer browser has an option under the Edit menu called Find. I entered the word “keyword” in the find box and it instantly jumped to a sentence near the bottom of the page that said “your keyword is ‘patience.’” I was in business!
I took the test and only got 7 questions correct. It then highlighted the questions I got wrong and allowed me, through process of elimination, to move my score up to 8 questions and thus pass the quiz. So, section 1 (including entering my credit card information) took me about 25 minutes in total to complete.
Then, I got a wild idea. What if I read nothing at all? Couldn’t I just use process of elimination to complete the remaining sections? The answer was “yes.”
I went to section two. Searched for the word “keyword.” Found the answer to the section two security question. Jumped to the quiz. Answered the questions as best I could using common sense. Got six correct. Looked at the ones I got wrong. Took the test again and put in different answers on the ones I got wrong and passed. I did the same for sections three through six and got to the final exam which turned out to be a “best of” set of questions from the pervious quizzes. I got 20 correct on my first try and completed the course.
It took me 25 minutes to complete the first section and then another 10 minutes to finish the course. What used to be an 8 hour prison sentence could have been completed in about 15 minutes. Is this progress? I’m not complaining, but I do feel like a doughnut right about now.
July 6, 2006
© Greg Harris, 2006