Traffic school...they have it on computers now!!

A couple of Sundays ago I was driving my family back to Mesa from the West Valley after a lovely evening at Shannon's sister's house. Though I have driven that stretch of road countless times I never before realized that the speed limit drops from 65 to 55 in the tunnel area through downtown Phoenix. A nice highway patrolman was nice enough to stop me and help me realize the folly of my ways, along with a written notice so that I would never forget. In other words, I got a ticket.

Fortunately, I have not had a ticket in many years (since before Shannon and I got married) so I was able to go to traffic school and get it wiped off the books. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have traffic school online now. It was a much more enjoyable experience to take it from the comfort of my own home rather than sitting in some dirty hotel room with a bunch of people I don't want to get to know and don't want to be there anymore that I do.

The way it works is you have to be logged in for four hours and spend about 3-5 minutes on each page reading the material. You cannot click the Next button until the timer says you can (as a former software tester I tried countless ways of beating the system, it is pretty locked down though). The best thing, besides being at home, is that you can log in and out as much as you want. I did an hour on Friday night, an hour Sat morning then did some yard work and then finished off later that morning. After you finish the coursework you go to a testing center (any FedEx Kinko's store will do) and they take a look at your ID to make sure you are you and log you in to take the test.

There is one thing in particular that I took away from the class that I would like to share with you. It stated that 25% of all railroad accidents are from cars driving into the side of trains. Yep, it is not a train driving into a car stuck on a track but the opposite where a train has already moved started through the intersection and some yahoo comes along and doesn't notice that a train is there and drives right into it. I paid over $100 to get that info, for you it is free!