Last night I attended traffic school in Oak Park, Michigan, punishment for speeding. Two hours. Hour one, a high school driver's education teacher gave a lecture, without using any notes whatsoever, bemoaning car accidents in the state of Michigan and praising the amount of revenue generated by speeding tickets. He knew statistics, broken down by city, county, and driver demographics. He had well-rehearsed anecdotes about drunk driving fatalities. Like a walking, talking after-school special. Did you know that in Michigan you can get a ticket for failure to wear a seatbelt in a parked car? Yep, so buckle up *before* turning the ignition, or face a no-point offense potentially.
Hour two, we watched a video (that pervasive classroom activity happens in all kinds of teaching contexts!) from the late 80s on how to respond to difficult driving situations like icy roads, failed brakes, passengers who refuse to buckle up, and so on. Christopher Reeve hosted the video and our teacher found it extremely ironic that Reeve starred in a public service video about car accidents a few years before his own horse accident. A flawed example of irony, I suppose, but, hey, look at that Alanis Morissette song. Perry King (from NBC's awesomely bad Riptide, the action show that aired right after The A Team), Sara Gilbert, Lorenzo Lamas, and Bruce Jenner all had cameos in the video. Viva!
Being married to a lawyer comes in very, very handy. Nicole represented me in court when I appeared for my ticket the other day. Courtroom absolutely full of traffic violators. Dozens of us. Four had lawyers in tow. When the prosecutor arrived in the courtroom, the four lawyers approached him and each lawyer was offered the same deal: avoid the points by going to traffic school. $95. a pop. Not sure if any of the folks who lacked representation got out of the tickets or not; I was gone by then. I tend to doubt it. Most driving infractions run at least $150. Many of the violators were wearing work uniforms: oil change places, fast food, etc., and it was hard not to see the process as the systematic transfer of capital from the service sector to the bureaucratic public sector. And those with attorneys caught a break of about 33% of the funds they had to turn over. I know, I know, don't speed then and you don't get into that kind of trouble. That's a fair point, but, still, let's acknowledge the various dynamics of the economics of this enterprise.
1 comment:
i wrote a letter to the judge, a woman, mentioning the speeding violation occurred at the hands of a hummer while my boy was slumbering in his car seat as i conveyed him to daycare. the result was a vastly reduced fine with no points. i gladly paid up. chock another one up to literacy and chutzpah. both seem increasingly to be luxuries afforded the haves while the have nots shambled into the docket.
Post a Comment