Last month, on my way out of a state that I don't live in, I got pulled over for going 92 MPH in a 75 zone. The officer gives me a pamphlet that describes how I can either pay a $150 fine, enroll in traffic school ($155 through the company that has a traffic school monopoly in this state), or have my day in court. Seeing as the court is one state away from where I live, the day in court is certainly not an option. I opt to go with the traffic school plan, figuring the extra $5 is worth not picking up a point on my record.
Last week, I finally get everything lined up for traffic school. My options at this point included either sitting in on a class in that state for $155, sitting in on a class here for $35 plus paying $155 on top of that anyway(!?!?!) or doing the online course for $155. The online course is the course that makes the most sense from both a convenience and a financial standpoint, so I sign up for that.
I sit down, ready to take the course. Unlike real traffic school, this online course will allow me to have Modest Mouse's This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About album playing for maximum irony. It requires spending 5.5 hours of time on it, which is monitored with timers in each section. They also have verification questions about yourself that randomly pop up for 30 seconds, just to make sure you're at the computer. These popup questions are so unobtrusive that I often missed them while I was reading the course material.
A couple hours into this tedium, and I figure out that the timers they've been using are done with some pretty low-tech javascript. Specifically, that the timer is tied to my computer clock instead of a clock on their server. I decide I'm going to take gross advantage of this by bumping up the time on my clock and watching the timer jump accordingly. I finished the remaining 3.5 hours of course in 1 hour worth of time. It's kind of funny that driving illegally fast got me into this problem, and going through this online course at an illegal speed is how I got through it. Clearly I've learned nothing.
Of course, no online traffic school experience is complete without requiring me to waste more time and money by forcing me to take the written exam in the presence of a notary. Oh wait, most other online traffic school programs don't require that bullshit. Fine, my particular online traffic school experience is not complete without requiring me to waste more time and money by forcing me to take the written exam in the presence of a notary. I head out to the notary yesterday to take my test. This notary doesn't bother to check my ID, leaves me alone to take the test, while telling me to go ahead and cheat if I feel so inclined. I finish the test in like 4 minutes, and the notary comes back, stamps it with his county-licensed seal of approval, and I give him $10 for his efforts. I still have the exam, which I have to fax back to the traffic school today. I can even change my answers if I want to before submitting this. Oh well, I suppose I will have to just have to be happy to not have the point on my record, even though the whole experience was a farce.