Illustration by Michael Dwayne
In prison, as prosecuting attorneys like to sarcastically say, everyone is innocent. Evidently, the mind-set works its way down to those committing the most minor violations of the law, including those involving traffic laws. At my most recent state traffic school appearance (blush/shrug) I encountered a fellow student who couldn’t understand why she was ticketed for driving 90 miles per hour. After all, she was following a police cruiser at the time.
Rare is the individual who believes his or her ticket was justified, and rarer still, if not non-existent, is the person who doesn’t dread traffic school. But points are points, as in points for traffic violations (12 in a two-year period will get you a suspended license), and insurance premiums are high enough as it is. (Traffic school attendance means the state won’t tell your insurer of your transgression.)
Every year around 25,000 of us will att/files/storyimages/traffic school in Louisville, and, despite the dread with which we approach it, we seem to come out of it safer, though not better, drivers (more on this distinction later). The folks who keep record of such things tell us that a person not attending traffic school after a ticket is 30 percent more likely to have an at-fault accident within the next year as the individual who grudgingly writes off 3? hours of his time (the more resentful among us would say "of his life") on a weekday night — or worse, a Saturday morning — to attend.
And as much as we want to grumble and complain, the great majority of us — 92.5 percent, to be exact — check the "yes" box on the survey distributed at the /files/storyimages/of each class asking if we thought the class was beneficial. Of course, for almost half of us in a typical class (yours truly included), traffic school isn’t beneficial enough to have prevented a repeat trip. Perhaps the second time’s the charm, however, as three-time attendees are, on average, just 10 percent of a given class and three-times-plus attendees (jokingly referred to as "career students" by a state traffic school administrator) make up a mere 3 percent.
The objective, according to Ken Clark, who’s taught traffic school in Jefferson County for 27 years (and who has gone without a ticket for 35 years and counting), really is to make us safer, not better, drivers. Clark says traffic school can’t make us better drivers because each of us is already convinced we’re the best; hence any effort to improve our driving skills would be wasted. To prove it, he asks the class what springs first to mind when, on the Watterson, say, we spot an Indiana plate in front of us? Case closed. Sorry, Hoosiers.
To make us safer, Clark and other instructors ask us to examine our attitudes behind the wheel. Specifically, when we speed, or when we’re cut off on the Watterson, or when someone is tailgating us, do we act as a child, disciplinarian or cool-headed adult? (I may warrant my own attitude classification, as I have a predilection for suddenly hitting my brakes to let tailgaters know that, one, I want them off my rear, and two, the driver in front of them is, perhaps, dangerously insane.)
Interestingly, the bulk of the class focuses on driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol and/or drugs, which does not cost you points. (Neither do a few other violations, like reckless driving and drag racing.) I also found out that I can be splayed inebriated across the hood of a locked car with keys to that car in my pocket and be considered by law a drunk driver. I can also receive a DUI citation for riding a 10-speed bicycle while impaired by drugs or alcohol.
It’s these facts and others that make school at least more palatable than knee surgery or a root canal, comparisons Clark always makes to console students. It is inevitable, though, that most, if not all, of the information will be lost on a portion of the class. The young lady I mentioned earlier who got the ticket for following the cruiser at 90 mph is a case in point. In the parking lot after school she still didn’t see how her ticket was justified. This leads to something you may (or may not) learn in traffic school: That little dark circle and thingamajig behind it in the upper right rear window of every Louisville Metro police cruiser is a small radar gun. It’s made just for the kind of person who believes that, hey, if the cop’s going 90, I can really make good time — and with a police escort!
See ya in school.