Actually useful online traffic school

July 17, 2014 6:54 PM

My husband got a ticket for a moving violation and has to complete some form of traffic school. He'd like to do it online and would like for it to be actually a useful course, not just some brush off thing. We live in Los Angeles County, if anyone knows of a good one somewhere that would work for him.
posted by jvilter to Education (5 answers total)

Best answer: So, I live in LA, and when I went through my traffic school experience I was kind of horrified at how bad EVERYTHING about the online sites were, from the curriculum to the design. Horrified enough that I mooted the idea of just making one myself (hey, turnkey business, right?).

The curriculum is state mandated, and includes the exact same information that you find in the handbook they give you before you take your written driver's test, and there's a state-mandated amount of time that you have to display the information for. Other info can be added, but it tends to just be random factoids, etc. that are there to confirm that you read the text instead of fucking off for a while. So while I can't say that they don't exist, I can say that I've looked around and never seen one and there are pretty good reasons to assume that they don't exist (they're not really something that counts on quality to ensure repeat customers, and most of the rankings I found focused on how quickly the school gets the state the certificate that says you passed).

Honestly, I'd still build one, except that you have to put up a pretty huge bond with the state, and I've never really cared enough to put that together.

Good luck.
posted by klangklangston at 7:32 PM on July 17, 2014

Best answer: Seconding klangklangston. Also beware; most of these sites will try very hard to upsell you certificates of completion and various other things that you don't actually need (they must report completion to the state directly, so any certificate is useless). Also, make sure you don't put it off, because (as you might guess) rush processing is also something they upsell.

Good luck.
posted by Aleyn at 9:01 PM on July 17, 2014

I would encourage your husband to attend an actual traffic school session. I've been several times and I think it's great, not only because these refresher courses make Californians on the whole much better drivers but also because you meet such an interesting sample of people in the class (which you miss out on, if you do it online).
posted by Rash at 9:04 AM on July 18, 2014

Response by poster: Rash, do you know of a good school for him to attend? Do you think in person schools are all generally better than the online ones? We live in the San Gabriel Valley.
posted by jvilter at 10:53 AM on July 18, 2014

Best answer: I just choose one at random from the list they send you. Never done it online, so I can't compare.
posted by Rash at 1:41 PM on July 18, 2014