Traffic School

Well one Friday morning a few weeks ago I got up a bit late and decided that on the fairly empty stretch of the 101 between Carpinteria and Ventura I would drive a bit over 80 mph (well it wasn't as preplanned as that makes it sound). I think that the fairly empty part is what got me in trouble since groups of cars are often going faster than that on the 101 with no one being pulled over. But as you have probably guessed by now, a California Highway Patrol officer noticed that I was going a bit above the legal speed limit of 65 and turned on the flashing lights. I was not feeling very rebellious that morning so I pulled over to the right shoulder very safely and fessed up to speeding (he actually did not ask me if I knew why he pulled me over, he just asked how fast my speedometer said I was going, after telling me what he clocked me at). Luckily he decided to report my speed as 75+ which he said would reduce my fine. He also described to me traffic school. Apparently if you get a ticket in California you can attend traffic school and the state won't tell your insurance about the ticket. (This is limited to one ticket every 18 months).

Well I paid my ticket online and then started online traffic school. As I run long simulations at work I read through the text and then it has little multiple choice tests at the end of each section. Unfortunately, because I got the ticket in Ventura county I have to go somewhere to take the final test since the county realized that if you take it online anyone could take the test for you...

The thing I found most interesting in the traffic school material is their explanation for why you don't save time by speeding. They said if you go 75 in a 55 for 20 miles you only save yourself 6 minutes and since people usually drive less than 20 miles they don't save much time. Now I drive at least 90 miles a day... that's 24 minutes I could take off my commute! Ok so the limit is 65 and the rule of thumb is they won't pull you over for less than 75 so I'd actually have to be going quite fast to save that much time, but I just thought that was a rather silly line of reasoning.

Now you may be asking - David aren't you at work? Why do you have time to go on and on about a speeding ticket? Well the project I am working on has several parallel tasks to it and they are all currently blocked by one person who appears to be in an all day meeting. And while this has given me a lot of time to go through the driving school stuff I can only take so much of that. Plus you might have notice that public has demanded a post. Luckily (or unfortunately depending on if you consider more work good) there is another project I am probably go to help with so I will have something to do when I hit these situations.

Ok time to get back to traffic school and learn more about how much speeding would help me if it wasn't so expensive to get tickets (and something about safety).