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November 29, 2006
Traffic school blues
Recently while driving one morning in San Francisco, I didn't yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk and got a moving violation. I paid the fine, and chose to enroll in online traffic school. Today, I did just that, at SkilledDriver.com.
After spending four hours reading through 36 long pages of traffic education and taking multiple quizzes, I completed that course, then was sent (via Web browser) to the National Traffic Safety Administration (https://secure.ntsa.us/) to take the final exam.
Immediately, things got ugly: virtually all of the questions on the exam had no precedent in the traffic school course. After hours of studying at SkilledDriver, it turns out that I was barely prepared for the official government exam.
I had no choice but to use Google to find the answers to questions like “If you are convicted of driving with drugs or alcohol in your body, the judge may give you 48 hours to ____ months in jail” [possible answers: 12, 6, 2, 3, 9]. There were some questions for which I couldn't find the answer at all, even on the California DMV's Web site. Some exam questions weren't even hinted at in the traffic school course — e.g., “A vehicle that is stopped, parked or left standing on a freeway (even if disabled) for more than ____ may be removed.”
Things got even uglier when I clicked to complete the exam and have it graded: every single question came up as incorrect, because somehow the question/answer correlation got screwed up by their software. For example, “Proof of financial responsibility must be maintained by ____. [Incorrect answer:] 0.08%” Now, obviously, the “.08%” answer was in response to a question about blood alcohol levels, but somehow it got attached to a question about proof of financial responsibility.
Exasperated in this colossal failure of such a simple software routine, I took the exam again, and for my efforts — I got a blank page. In desperation, I hit “Reload” on that page, and finally things improved: “You have passed the final exam with a score of 87%.”
Here's a screen shot of the final exam results (click to enlarge):
What a supreme waste of my time. SkilledDriver.com let me down, and the NTSA let me down. And now I'm left wondering — did the Frisco cop who cited me also jack me around? I'm an exceptionally cautious driver and I was surprised when I got pulled over for supposedly not yielding to someone in the crosswalk — something I'm highly conscious of here in crowded San Francisco. Maybe that cop just randomly pulled me over and figured, correctly, that I wouldn't question his judgement. Now I've paid over $220 to the County and the traffic school people, I've wasted most of my work day dealing with bad instructional software, and I'm suspicious of even the premise of my “violation.” What a sham!
SkilledDriver:
800-559-8766
customerservice@skilleddriver.com
National Traffic Safety Administration:
800-539-8188
cs@ntsa.us
November 29, 2006 in Truly Random | Permalink
Comments
Steve - thanks for the comment. It really sounds like SkilledDriver.com is a lousy choice for anyone needing to do their traffic school online.
Posted by: Matt // Le Blog Exuberance | Jun 19, 2007 1:06:33 PM
I selected SkilledDriver more-or-less at random. For me, the course materials were OK, but the processing and support stunk.
Actually, like you, I'm a careful driver--the point I'm trying to keep from appearing on my record is the first moving violation I've incurred in over 30 years of driving. I think that's because I know the rules--it's actually kind of fun for me to go over them online. I was always good at multiple choice tests too.
But I do resent this cottage industry of online instruction--it's obviously parasitic and I hate the idea of handing over $20 to these people just to use their website. The only actual value provided is that they grade your test and send you a certificate of completion--problem is, they don't do this very well.
Last Monday I faxed my notarized final exam form to skilleddriver.com, only to be told on Wednesday when I called that it had not been received. Funny, my fax machine thought it sent successfully. Then Skilleddriver told me at 2:45 pm on Wednesday that they wouldn't score my exam because it was past the noon deadline (but their website says 3 pm PST several places). Then they didn't do it the next day either. Finally on Friday they agreed to waive the fee for overnight delivery so that I could get my certificate of completion to the court by my due date of June 18. But they didn't overnight my certificate, they UPS'd me a photocopy. The clerk at the Superior Court thought I was trying to pull something over on her.
Now when I telephoned skilleddriver to find out how this has happened, I get this explanation that "your completion date was for the traffic school, not for the delivery of the certificate, so as long as things are in process, you're OK." This is nonsense, isn't it? Fortunately I was able to exercise my 30-day extension, so this fly-by-night operation didn't actually manage to affect my legal and insurance status, but it did waste several hours of my time.
I tried to e-mail this comment to the company, but of course, customerservice@skilleddriver.com address is non-functional. There's something clearly fraudulent about this operation.
Posted by: Steve Skaar | Jun 19, 2007 10:37:56 AM
I too had questions on my exam that did not match any information on the traffic school web site. So, in searching for my answers I found your posting! Given that you got question 14 wrong it didn't help me much. Anyway FYI http://www.xanga.com/WaruiTengai had the correct answer which is 4 hours. What a crazy system!
Regards,
Mike
Posted by: mike | Mar 22, 2007 6:07:32 PM
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