So, I've been at Traffic School for the last two Monday nights. Not my favorite thing to do on a Monday night, but I didn't really have a choice. A couple of months ago I was going too fast down Cambridge on my way back from Trader Joes (I take that short cut because there are less lights...there are also more cops, I came to find out.) Before I knew it, there were lights in my rearview mirror, and for the first time in ten years, I was getting a speeding ticket. I probably deserved it, and I probably needed to go to traffic school again, just to hear all of the stories that would scare me back into driving safely. I'm sure my husband was not thrilled about the $300 ticket we had to pay, but he's probably secretly thankful that I got scared by the stories and am changing my driving habits for the better.
My attitude about traffic school in the past has been that they make it so incredibly boring that you never want to go back and you change your driving habits for good. Obviously, that only lasted 10 years for me the last time. So this time, I took a different approach to traffic school. I tried to learn some new things and put them into practice so that I don't end up here again in another 10 years. So here's what I learned:
1. The most popular ticket was for speeding, but not on the freeway. Most of the tickets I heard about were given on the residential streets where 25 is the speed limit unless otherwise posted.
2. The second most popular ticket was for the infamous "California" rolling stop. No, it is not a legal thing to do in California. And yes, you will get a ticket for doing it.
3. The reason that the speed limit is still 65 mph is because the highways were built in the 1930's and 1940's when cars could only go that fast. Today cars can go a lot faster, but the highways haven't been updated to handle that.
4. The hands-free law doesn't start until next July (2008), contrary to all of the emails I received this month.
5. The number one cause of death in children in America is car accidents. Yikes!
As I looked around, I saw people of all different ages and ethnicities in the room. There were Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians. I sat next to a woman from Iran and a man named Salvador. There was a young girl in there who truly had only been driving for a few weeks and an older gentleman who was 84 and was in there for his first ticket ever. It was a true cross section of America, and as I think about it now, a true picture of what salvation is like. There we all are, sinners, sitting in that court room, waiting for our punishment. We all deserve to go to jail because we broke the law (even as miniscule as speeding is, it's still against the law.) We are all equal offenders in the eyes of the law, and we all deserve the same punishment. But then Jesus comes out and gives us our yellow certificate that says we are free to go. Free to go, and we didn't even have to go through traffic school. We stand around in shock, joyfully elbowing each other and thinking, "Thank goodness I don't have to sit through another 8 hours of hell." Of course, in order to stay out of traffic school, we have to take the yellow certificate and change our driving habits for good. And there in lies the true test.
So there are my lessons from traffic school. Not thrilling, but surely life changing.
1 comment:
True. All true. Chad always says the two places where everyone is equal is the Cross and the DMV (add traffic school to the list). I, too, have gotten a speeding ticket on Cambridge. 25, 25, 25...oops. I think mine was for like 42 or something. I am with you! It was probably the same Orange PD cop.
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