We had an entertaining speaker who broke the nearly four-hour class up into various topics. I learnt some very interesting statistics, points of law, etc. Parts of it I hope to never use--the DUI, for example (I will not drive if I have even one drink; I don't have much tolerance for alcohol). But our DUI laws are very interesting. The two examples given for high-profile DUI cases from Kentucky were the Carrollton bus crash and another where a pregnant teacher was mown down in her front yard whilst looking at her landscaping by a drunk showing off a Corvette to a friend. I remembered both of them (who could not forget the bush crash, of course--but I was in class with people either too young or apparently not in Kentucky at the time, and the footage shocked them. When I was in college, one of the young men who had been terribly burnt was there. A former friend went to high school with several of the survivors. Carrollton is near my own family's home of Owen County, which in fact is where the driver who served his time for manslaughter was living the last I heard.) Funny that with a memory like a sieve, I tend to remember drunk driving cases, such as one that happened on Euclid when I was in school where the driver survived (one passenger was decapitated, the other gravely injured and requiring home care), with the driver receiving shock probation. I remember his case was spotlighted against a woman in a neighbouring county who drank and drove once, hit a tree, didn't hurt anybody but herself (I'm not saying that's good, mind you, but the point was it was a less severe outcome) and she was put away for years with a small child she wouldn't see grow up. The difference was the power and privilege of the families involved. Anyway, Kentucky DUI laws have improved substantially since the Carrollton bus crash. The man who killed the teacher is serving life for her death, for example.
I also learnt a lot about our graduated licensing programme for drivers under 18, including their curfews and limits on passengers, and 180 days as a permit driver, 180 days as an intermediate driver. It's a good idea. I also found out that the legal limit for under 21 drivers is under 0.02 in Kentucky, as they are of course breaking the law for drinking anyway if they have consumed alcohol. The reason it's not 0.0 is because the body makes minute traces of alcohol and the analysers, which are much more accurate than they used to be, nonetheless usually can't measure down that far.
Of course there were also issues such as speeding, distraction, defensive driving, road rage, those kinds of topics. Will it make me a better driver? I don't know. Except for the DUI stuff and graduated licensing I knew a lot of it already, or it was just common senes. But I was a lot more careful about my speed (I normally go a max of 5 miles over the limit--this time I was monitoring it down to the speed limit), lane changes etc. I'm a pretty good driver all in all. I've only had the two citations since I've been driving (that was back in 1986, so it's been 21 years) and I'm close to that low-point on the graph (ages 45-49) of least crashes. I've been involved in no serious accidents (knock on wood), and only one small bump into someone during traffic has been due to my driving. (Although let me tell you, being in someone else's car and having the brakes go out on you is scary...that happened once, but no one was hurt.) I use my turn signals. I generally keep my cool. I can count the number of times I've been on a cell phone driving on one hand. But anyone can be a better driver. I will tell you I pulled out of that class pretty carefully and monitored what I was doing moreso than usual. I didn't want the irony of having an accident or a stop on my way back from traffic school.
Which reminds me...I need my new insurance card. It's at my mom's and the old one just expired. I need to e-mail her and see if she can send it to me.
Oh, and I found an interesting article (in Reader's Digest, of all things) called Asleep at the Wheel. Check it out...it's pretty good, and sleepy drivers are just about as bad as drunk drivers.
Well, I need to go to bed. I slept for a little while in the chair of comfort, so it's not like I've been up all this time, but bed sounds nice.
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