traffic school

I had traffic school today – at 8am.  if you don’t already know, you can take traffic school after you get certain types of tickets to avoid getting assigned a ‘point’ on your driving record.  points are bad because they lead to increased insurance rates and if you get enough of them it could result in a license suspension.

in reality traffic school is a time suck in which you really don’t learn a whole lot, other than violating traffic rules makes you waste a bunch of time in a bs class.  it’s as rubber stampy as rubber stamps get.

interestingly, traffic school is an industry that the internet has completely obliterated.  now that you can take traffic school online, attendance at physical schools is supposedly very low.  we had 11 people in our class, and our instruction was saying that before online classes they usually had 40 people classes and they often had to turn away people.

our instruction actually gave us a lot of info about how online schools work.  basically, you read through several pages of text, after which you are asked a random question, such as ‘what kind of fruit does the author like?’  This question is used to ensure that you actually took the time to read through the text.  After that random question, you have an actual traffic schooly question.  At the end i guess you have a comprehensive exam that is supposedly very very easy. 

Traffic schools, both physical and online, are required to provide 400 minutes of ‘class.’ but our teacher said she finished the online test in a little over an hour, since she already knew the answers to traffic-oriented questions.  she also said that by scanning the text for words that didn’t fit in, such as a fruit, she could easily identify the random question answer without actually having to read through everything.

but online traffic school is also kind of a pain, because you have to get the test notarized, since they can’t validate your identity online, and you also have to wait for your certificate to be mailed to you.  it also costs a bit more.  in any case, i went in person because that just seemed easier and cheaper, plus, i wanted to see what the school was like at least once.

anyway, school i picked was called ‘fun fun fun and pizza.’  really, that’s what it was called.  it was scheduled to run from 8am to 4pm, with a pizza lunch in the middle, thus the ‘pizza’ in the name.

the students in our class included two teenage girls, and a bunch of adults that ranged from their 50’s to what looked like 80’s.  minors can’t take classes online, and i guess old people who aren’t down with the whole internet thing are better suited for physical classes.

class was basically the instructor talking about traffic rules, with a bunch of commentary and digressions mixed in.  at one point, the instructor started talking about rescuing pets and how you shouldn’t purchase a pure-bred dog unless you are going to show it, for a good 15 mins.  this made one of the students ask her to stick to traffic school instruction – which was a pretty awkward moment.

Additionally, you had one of these teenage girls asking all these stupid questions, and interjecting these ‘well one time my friend ….’ anecdotes, after which some of the older ladies would go on about their kids, blah blah blah. 

That was lame.  i reminded me a lot of college, where you always have these role players.  like, the kid that won’t shut up, the kid that asks dumb questions, etc.  all of which just makes the class a lot longer than it really should have been.

the instructor kept saying how she loved teaching these classes, although she doesn’t get paid much.  to her credit, she was very enthusiastic and made the mostly boring subject matter tolerable.  i mean, considering she gets paid $8 an hour (she mentioned this several times), she did a very good job.

the traffic info was mostly very obvious.  our instructor would also point out answers to test questions – so that made things a lot easier.

one bit of info that was particularly interesting was drunk driving.  apparently, cops give you a field sobriety test, and if you fail that you get either breath, blood or urine.  the field sobriety is not used as evidence, instead it’s used to see if you should be tested further.  you can also only get tested by one test -  you can’t get tested by say, breath, to show that you’re under the influence of alcohol, and blood, to show that you’re on drugs.

if you get a dui, you get a bunch of fines, a criminal record, go to jail, etc.  this can cost $10,000 – but often this will cost lots and lots more, especially if you hire a lawyer.  i mean, the criminal record thing is big in itself – this could cause you to lose your job, make it difficult to get loans and stuff.

but, if you refuse to take the test, you get your license revoked for a year, but do not get any criminal record or fines or any of that stuff.  The moral of the story, in my opinion, is that if you are drunk, instead of taking the test, refuse and take the license suspension.  you can even take the field sobriety first, and if you fail that then refuse.  they can’t use the field sobriety to charge you with a crime, since it doesn’t objectively show if you are under the influence, or what you are under the influence of.

in any case that was really good to know.  made the whole class worthwhile. 

at the end of the instruction portion, we took a 20 point, true/false test…and this was a joke.  the first 10 questions followed a true, then false pattern.  the final ten questions were all true.  i think almost everyone in the class got all the questions right.  the exam was also self graded, so i mean, if you needed to you could cheat easily.

so, our class was supposed to be 8 hours, but we got out at 12:30, after only about 4 hours of instruction.  that is on par with the online class – and a lot cheaper.  i mean, it was a good experience.  there are better ways to spend a saturaday morning obviously, but all-in-all i didn’t mind it at all.

one thing though, any sort of paper work involving old people is a bitch.  even simple things like filling out forms is a mind numbing time consuming experience.  scoring the test was also a bitch, because these old people had to go over every single answer, one by one.  god, it was so slow.

so that was that.

anyway, it has been mentioned that posting has been slow this week.  and yes, it has been.  but after this super long post i have a guest post from TJFKAK, aka coughka – it’s a great review of the zojirushi bento box thingy.  it’s coming in a few mins.