Yep – first day of traffic school today. Joy oh joy. 4 hours today X_x. They were soooo strict too. You couldn’t have your cell phone turned on. They said if it rang you would lose your attendance points. You couldn’t eat. You couldn’t have any books or magazines or you would lose attendance points (if they caught you that is). They tried to scare us and say that there were people sitting amongst us to check that no one was doing that (right). Then 15 minutes for break and you couldn’t be late. They would close the doors at a certain time and if you weren’t with the doors, they wouldn’t let you in and you’d lose your attendance points. But all in all, it was much better than I thought. I thought it was gonna be some guy lecturing but it wasn’t like that at all. A former policeman was the teacher and he spent the first hour getting people to introduce themselves and what they got a citation for. I think the majority of the people got caught for speeding in a 45 zone lol. I do that all the time. 45 just feels so slow.

He gave us a lot of tips on what to fight and what not to fight in court. One thing that was really good was local street speed limits are fightable. He said 22350 relies on reasonable and prudent circumstances so when you’re in a local street and the speed limit is 30, and you drive 50, the likelihood of judge letting it go when you fight it is high if your argument is good. Let’s say it’s 3am and there are no other cars in sight, your car is in good condition, the streets are well lit, he says that would be easily dropped. He said don’t bother fighting if they got you in a photo because everything is videotaped now. He also said if you want to get off with a warning, you might try crying lol. I don’t think I can cry at will like that though lol.

He said that motorcycle cops sole purpose is to give out tickets, and they’re often at accident scenes so they are especially zealous about giving you the ticket. (It was a motorcycle guy who gave me my ticket). He claims there aren’t any quotas because it’s illegal (right). He says it’s based on percentage of convictions. And if you see a motorcycle cop in your neighborhood it’s most likely because neighbors called in complaining about that street and so they’re assigned there to keep nailing people. That would explain the guy at our street. I swear he just sits there giving several tickets in a row.

We also saw a Goofy cartoon, dateline show on road rage and we did small group discussions. He told some really corny jokes. Anyway, next week I have another date with traffic school – poor me but at least it wasn’t as bad as Al’s experience with traffic school. He said his was ultra boring.