What I Learned in Traffic School

Recently, my wife called me at the office.  From the sound of her voice, I knew that I was in trouble.  However, I hadn't imagined how much, not until she coldly announced, "I just received a picture of you in the mail.  It appears to have been taken January 31st.  Now, Sean, I have warned you about this type of thing.  I'm so mad at you I could scream!"

My mind immediately raced back to January 31st.  What the heck was I doing on the 31st?  What was I ...   Uh oh!  I was in big trouble!

On January 31st, I awoke early to drive from my home just outside of Phoenix to Albuquerque, New Mexico -- the site of the Association of Continuing Legal Education (ACLEA) Winter Meeting.  That evening, we kicked off the conference with a raucous cocktail party.  I should have known better.  Of course, my picture would be taken; but not at the cocktail party.  My picture had been taken hours earlier when I received a photo radar speeding ticket (thus, the very grainy, yet still remarkably sexy, picture below).

While most states are attempting to solve their budget shortfalls through a combination of higher taxes and reduced speeding, my home state of Arizona has instead opted to install a photo radar equipment every 20 feet along our highways.  In fact, if we get any more of these devices, we'll have to change the tagline on our license plates to "The Grand Camera State."  

Now, as a patriotic citizen, I was doing my part for the cause.  In fact, I might have been doing more than my part, as this was not my first ticket (or even second).

Of course, as you know, the biggest penalty for receiving a speeding ticket isn't the cost of the violation itself.  The real penalty would be imposed by my auto insurance carrier when they learned that I had a penchant for driving as if I was a motorist in Los Angeles with a video camera mounted on my dashboard.  To avoid paying insurance rates higher than the national debt (and almost as incomprehensible), I was willing to take drastic measures.  That's right.  I signed up for traffic school.

As you can imagine, I wasn't looking forward to spending an entire Saturday in traffic school.  In fact, I would have gladly dipped my ears in steak sauce and climbed into a boxing ring with Mike Tyson had it been a lawful alternative to traffic school.   After all, in my view, traffic school is perhaps the only thing worse than CLE, except in the case of traffic school, you've actually done something wrong to deserve your punishment.

However, as it turned out, I couldn't have been more wrong if I was Bobby Jindal recounting the events following Hurricane Katrina.  Traffic school was actually far superior to CLE.

For one, my traffic school instructor had the "wacky" idea that we should actually learn something out of the experience.  This is a far cry from CLE, which should actually be renamed "CLA" -- continuing legal attendance.  In that vain, my traffic school instructor had the temerity to insist that we ... you're not going to believe this ... pay attention.  We were strictly prohibited from using laptops, cell phones and PDAs (and from some of the questions asked by my classmates, our brains).

Second, to facilitate our learning, the instructor had the even more radical idea that he would make the presentation interesting.  Rather than reading from his prepared text in a monotone, he told jokes and stories.  And get this ... his visual aids were actually visual.  Rather than simply clicking through bullet points of text, he showed live video and animations to illustrate his points.  As a result, the four hours flew by as if it was only 3 hours and 55 minutes.

Of course, let me be fair.  There are many lively, witty and informative lawyers on the CLE circuit (and some of them are quite handsome in their photo radar speeding ticket pictures as well).  Yet, I've sat through my fair share of CLE seminars where I've brought my own steak sauce, just in case Mike Tyson happened to find his way into the seminar.  On the whole, it's a close call as to which is the greater punishment -- CLE or traffic school.

What do you think?