Traffic School 2.0

It was a lovely Saturday considering that we’re in the midst of winter. The sun was out and the temperature was in the mid-50s. It was a great time to go to the nearby park and hike around the lake. But not this Saturday. I had to attend traffic school.

A few weeks ago, I was caught by the California Highway Patrol making an illegal line change. I crossed the white solid line when exiting the freeway. I see a lot of drivers do this all the time and able to get away with it. They should consider themselves fortunate. I was fined $291 for my indiscretion plus $34 for the class fee.

This was the second time I attended traffic school. In 2010, I went to class for a different infraction. the purpose of going to class is to have the court dismiss the citation on the basis of traffic school attendance. Once dismissed, it would not show in your DMV record anymore. That’s what you want to happen. You want your driving record to remain clean because it’s used by insurance companies to set up rates. In other words, the cleaner your record, the more reasonable your insurance premium will be. Now, this option to make your ticket disappear is only allowed once in any 18-month period. I got lucky that my last violation occurred past that period, although, I’d admit, just barely.

It was a whole day class conducted by a retired cop. No doubt about it, he was a force to behold. He displayed this aura of someone with many years of issuing traffic tickets. He was a straight shooter. He said that it would be for our mutual benefit to give his lecture our undivided attention as there would be a written test later. He continued that he would take it as affront should we fail it. It would mean that he didn’t do a good job. At the same time, it would mean that we wouldn’t get the certificate required to have our citation dismissed.

The first order of the day was a roll call of the thirty attendees. It was followed by a getting to know each other session. It was similar to what they do in an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting, I suppose. One by one, we took turns introducing ourselves and telling the class what brought us there. It felt better spilling the beans to a sympathetic audience. A large majority in the class were caught on camera crossing the intersection after the light turned red.

The lecture was supposed to be about the current California Vehicle Code (CVC) which consists of 43,000 laws.

“How do we expect to know all of these laws?” We asked.

“Such a monumental task,” he mused. “But ignorance of the law doesn’t excuse no one.”

“Then how do we know for sure if we break a law?”

“It’s when you see the red light of a police car flashing behind you.”

Since it would take a lifetime to cover the California Vehicle Code in its entirety, the instructor concentrated in the provisions that are already discussed in the California Driver Handbook. It kept us wide awake as we already know most of them.

He did introduce us to a concept that leads to a ticket or an accident on the road. It’s called unintentional amnesia. It happens when we become so engrossed in our preconditioned notion of reality that, when a change occurs, we tend to overlook it. Let’s say you’ve been driving this route for many years. It’s likely that you’ll miss the new stop sign on the day it was posted or the slick of oil from the previous night’s accident. It’s because your mind doesn’t expect them to be there.

At the end of the day, we all passed the test and got our certificates. Darn, he’s good, really good. He’s one of the best instructors I ever had.