Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
When faced with traffic school, you can now steer onto the information highway and take your lumps in cyberspace. But watch it - that PC has a mean streak.
By SUSAN ASCHOFF
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 18, 2000
Nobody willingly submits to four stupefying hours of traffic school. After being ticketed for bad driving, offenders suffer through the class to keep the black mark off their records and avoid a hike in their insurance rates.
The purpose of the class is to promote safer driving. But to the students, it feels like after-school detention: torture with a time limit.
Doing penance just got easier in Florida.
Now you can go to traffic school online. At your convenience. And without rubbing elbows with those losers to whom you feel superior even if you are sent to school for the very same behavior.
Congratulations! says the computer screen, where the teacher/student ratio is 1 to 1. You are now enrolled in the Florida Online Traffic School.
The new service is about much more than convenience, says its creator. It's designed to reach the people who would rather risk their driver's licenses and possibly their necks than go to class.
"There were 3.6-million moving violations in Florida last year. Only 550,000 went to school," says Robert Proechel, president of Absolute Traffic Academy. The Winter Park company provides the Internet classes under a license with the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
"How," Proechel asks, "do we get to the 3-million?"
Apparently by letting them attend in their bathrobes.
In a traditional class, traffic violators gather in a room for an endless lecture about responsible driving. Some instructors try to make the experience interesting -- comedians teach at the Improv Comedy Traffic Schools -- and some try to make it San Quentin. Either way, students have to stay until the teacher hands out the certificates of completion at the end.
Cyber students phone (800) 771-2255 or log on to http://www.floridaonlinetrafficschool.com for instructions on how to enroll. Offered in English and Spanish, the course requires no special software, only access to the Internet. The cost averages $35 to $40, or about the same as a classroom course.
Students must pass a final, 40-question exam with a grade of 80 percent or better to earn a completion certificate. (Many classroom courses do not give a test.) They must be online for four full hours, regardless of any speed-reading skills.
And those who would recruit a stand-in to take the class for them are cautioned to think again: Cheaters can be prosecuted for perjury.
Security was one of the state's main concerns in approving an online program, says Proechel. Before beginning, students must answer an array of personal identification questions. Later, the questions pop up on the screen to confirm that the person enrolled is the one doing the work.
Proechel already has fan mail from graduates: mothers home with small children, senior citizens who do not want to drive across town, career types who do not have four consecutive hours to spare. They all extol the flexibility of putting in their time when and where they choose.
We decided to give the course a try.
Assigned a fictitious crime -- we ran a red light and failed to stop when pursued by police -- we answer the ID questions and are given two passwords.
We are told that there will be seven sections, covering topics from substance abuse to defensive driving techniques. We are to read each section and answer the practice questions at the end. We may log off at any time; the program will automatically pick up where we left off when we return.
When finished, we will be heading out on the roads to use what we are going to discover about driving and hopefully about (our)self, assures the screen.
Great. Therapy as well as traffic tips.
Oops. Time to take attendance.
For security purposes, please answer one of your personal identification questions, says the screen.
The question must be answered within two minutes and two tries, it instructs, or the program will assume someone else is taking the course and we will be disqualified.
Do you prefer dogs or cats?
C-a-t-s.
Whew. Aced that one.
Soon we are scrolling through paragraph after paragraph on why we should care about safe driving, what defines it and what impairs it. Amateurish cartoons of stressed-out men and mugs of frothy beer accompany the text. But the words are sobering.
About 3 in every 10 Americans will be involved in an alcohol-related crash at some time in their lives.
Motor vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause of death for all people from 6 to 29 years old.
Someone dies in a traffic accident in Florida every three hours.
At the end of each section, four multiple-choice questions appear. We answer them correctly, at which point the next section is supposed to appear. Instead, the screen says:
You have only spent 16 minutes on the material, the test, and your break (if applicable). You must spend 25 minutes. Please click "continue" below. Do not click "back" or you will be disqualified from the program.
"Continue" sends us back to the beginning of the section. We leave it on our screen and go eat tuna noodle casserole. When we return and scroll down, the quiz questions have been changed. We answer and are moved onto the next section.
Are you afraid of heights?
No. And yes, it is still us.
After a student completes the course and passes the test, one can print out a copy of the results. Absolute Traffic Academy sends an e-mail confirming completion and mails a certificate with a state seal.
A judge can order a driver to a four-hour Basic Driver Improvement course for violations including speeding, failure to yield, improper passing, careless driving and other ticketed infractions. Others go voluntarily to protect their record and their insurance rates. Repeat offenders may be ordered to a 12-hour Advanced Driver Improvement course. If a driver is involved in a collision in which someone goes to the hospital, a Traffic Collision Avoidance course is mandatory.
Depending on the county, drivers in Florida ordered to traffic school have from one to several months to complete an approved course and present proof to the court.
About 520,000 people attend driver improvement school in Florida each year, says the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
In analyses of whether education makes a difference, the state compares groups of graduates 18 months after they finish school to non-attendees of similar age, gender, location and driving history.
"There are between 6 and 15 percent fewer violators in the group that took a class than the control group," says management review specialist Milton Grosz. "People who attend a course because of a crash show a 40 percent improvement over a control group."
The department should be able to compare the effectiveness of cyber vs. classroom courses in the future, Grosz says.
"The whole point is to get to the people we're not getting to now," he says of the online option.
The text on the computer screen scrolls on.
How would you feel, it asks, if you were at fault in a collision that turned a 20-year-old into a quadriplegic or killed a family's only child?
Pay attention, class.