Back in April I
was in San Diego working and I decided to pay Jimmy the Jag a visit one hour
north. The freeways in Southern California are a jam packed dose of
road rage waiting to happen so I decided to slip over to the toll road and
avoid the heavier traffic. Good call since I quickly found myself
alone on the road. I grabbed the cell and called Jim to get some
direction adjustments and apparently my foot drifted heavy. Since I was
alone I didn't realize how fast I was soon going. The light show
behind me reminded me. The CHP officer was nice enough and he only
wrote my ticket for 80 MPH so I could attend traffic school and avoid the
insurance hit. In the state of California attending traffic school
allow you to clear a minor ticket from your record.The best part of traffic schools in California is that they are private businesses. Open the yellow pages and pick a flavor. Choose a comedy traffic school or pizza making traffic school or just a plain old driving traffic school. I chose the regular version and to my surprise it turned out to be very educational. The class I attended was split between older traffic offenders and students getting ready to take their permit tests. Apparently one of the instructors was MIA so both sessions were combined. The young adults take four days of this but I only needed one. I grabbed a seat in the back and got ready to make the best of a long day. Our instructor started the class with a few horror stories about people having heart attacks while driving and wiping out innocent bystanders. Then some stroke stories with the same results. Oh man, it's only 8:50 am and already we have a body count of 10. The point? The instructor spelled it out for all of us, you can do everything right and still die. These poor people didn't do one thing wrong and yet they died. My head was spinning hard, I needed more coffee.
The
first video was titled Safe Driving Practices based on the book "The
California Drivers Handbook". The key nugget from this ten year old
tape; the car you don't see is the one that hits you. From there we
jumped to the new and improved driver's handbook. The reason we all
knew it was new was the message from Arnold on page one. The videos
were 10-20 years old but they had money to print new books for Arnold.During our review of school bus passing rules the instructor shared another story about a driver who had his neck snapped off. The body count rises to 11. The carnage thus far was incredible and it wasn't even 10 am. No worries, because the street car story and the train story brought the death count to 13 at exactly 10 am.
Sidebar - Bad
TV has a new home and LMN is my new favorite station. They have
collected all the bad TV movies and now they show them non-stop here.
As I write this
Lifetime Movie Network is showing Road Rage;
Yasmine Bleeth, Jere Burns (1999).When Ellen Carson accidentally cuts off Eddie, a short-tempered delivery driver upset over recent deaths in his family, he follows and harasses her. Ellen complains to his boss, and Eddie is fired, driving him to begin an obsessive stalking campaign against Ellen and her family. It doesn't get any better, or should I say worse, than this.
The rest of the morning was filled with sample driving tests and a few more dusty videos. Before the teacher hits play he shares the urban legend about the poodle in the microwave. I am starting to think I need to track animals deaths too. But before I can get too deep into that the video begins. Smokey Joe's High Ride is the story of four friends getting ready to go to a party. It's a big party so they have beer and weed in hand. They discuss getting wasted as they drive to the house. Before they head out they decide to play a driving video game first. The player gets three chances to drive a course. First chance is straight, second chance is stoned, and the final chance is stoned and drunk. The scores drop quickly each time until the final round which ends in a horrible crash. These were video game deaths so they didn't count towards the overall total but it did scare our real party goers straight.
I looked down at my watch and realized lunch was still 30 minutes away, ugh. Before lunch we had to endure yet another video. Avoiding Collisions used Teddy bears on wet roads to illustrate how to...uhm... avoid hitting Teddy bears on wet roads? Oh yeah we also got the story about a pedestrian who was hit so hard by a car that she flew 30 feet in the air and landed on two strangers injuring them seriously. Lesson here was to watch out for falling bodies at accident scenes. That brought to a close our morning and I joined a few of my classmates for some random sushi.
Dillon and Julia shared their lunch and a few of their thoughts and dreams. I guess I had gotten somewhat out of touch with the real youth of today. MTV and Entertainment Weekly only provide me the media perception of what they want our youth to be, consumers These two didn't fit that mold one bit, they appreciate the arts and theater, they dress smartly, and were just flat out really nice to everyone in the class. If they are an example of our future then I am reassured. The media shows us the sensational so often that it is easy to think that "teens gone wild" is the norm. Apparently people who raise good kids don't sell papers or make the news but those parents are doing all of us a favor. It wasn't just Dillon and Julia either, all of the permit students were funny, articulate, and good natured.
We gathered back in our well worn classroom for the after lunch push. More videos and death stories filled our afternoon. There was the story about the kick boxer who was shot chasing a hit and run driver, and perhaps the strangest story involved a couple who drove off a cliff on Highway 1. The husband was able to cling to a ledge but when he saw that his wife didn't make it out of the car he let go and joined her on the rocks below. The final body count for the day was 18. Tragedy and cars go together but I don't think that was the point, the lesson here is take nothing for granted especially when driving. We like to believe it won't happen to us and chances are it won't but if you let your guard down you will increase your chances of being unlucky. I received my certificate and said good bye to my classmates. Most of them will be back tomorrow to finish the permit course but I am done. I learned my lesson about speeding and my faith in our youth was restored all for the low low price of $37. That's what I call a way cool traffic school :)
Sean