Motoring: Safer Streets Just a Chuckle (or an Enchilada) Away July 9, 2006
In California, humor-themed driver-improvement courses help students blot out speeding tickets. In New York, however, it’s strickly serious business.
IN California, where traffic offenders can often clear their records by attending driver-improvement classes, Marian Flowers-Loop headed to traffic school several months ago to blot out a speeding ticket.
Ten years before, she had attended such a course and found it drier than Death Valley. So this time, Mrs. Flowers-Loop, of Oceanside, Calif., chose a class given by the Improv Comedy Traffic School, one of dozens of providers of humor-themed courses approved by California courts. Six hours into her class at a Marriott hotel in Carlsbad, with two hours remaining, she was raring for more.
“His presentation is a riot,” she said of her instructor, Steve Verret, a professional comic. (“You’ve got to be careful leaving the parking lot,” he joked about his audience, composed purely of traffic violators.) Speaking by phone during a break, Mrs. Flowers-Loop raved about his “Family Feud”-style games. “If you don’t remember the material, your team loses,” she said, adding that later there would be a graduation party “with dip and stuff.”
In California, where such courses are commonly called “traffic school,” state law allows courts to dismiss tickets and, at the judge’s discretion, reduce fines, for motorists who agree to attend. Laws in other states, notably Florida and Texas, also let motorists avoid points by taking classes. In those states, too, some driver-education programs employ comics, who must follow a curriculum prescribed by the state or by a court. Other schools offer inducements like heaping plates of food.
But in New York, driving-improvement classes are strictly serious business. In 1997, the state allowed stand-up comics to teach a course called “Laugh and Learn” at a Manhattan comedy club, but current Department of Motor Vehicles regulations require advertising to reflect the “serious nature” of the course, without “gimmicks or enticements, such as comedy or free gifts.”
But New York does offer a monetary enticement to take a class. State law guarantees insurance discounts to graduates of defensive driving classes: at least 10 percent off liability and collision premiums for three years. Thus, a course that usually costs $35 to $60 in the state could reap hundreds of dollars in savings over three years. For people with traffic convictions, completing a course can also take four points off the sum that counts toward a license suspension.
Because of the advertising restrictions, “we don’t hire comics as instructors in New York ? there’d be no point,” said Jim Hoffheimer, president of the American Institute for Public Safety, a private company that runs the Improv Comedy Traffic School in California and Florida (but in New York operates under its solemn corporate name). Like other corporations and nonprofit groups that offer such instruction, Mr. Hoffheimer’s company generally charges $25 to $45 for basic driver-improvement classes.
Now, though, New York could take a fresh look at comedy. A state law signed by Gov. George E. Pataki in October could soon allow motorists to take driver-improvement courses online. In the dozen or so other states that have authorized online courses, a few companies, including Mr. Hoffheimer’s, offer Internet instruction with a comic twist.
Ken Brown, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, said the state was developing rules for a pilot program of online driving improvement courses that could reduce the license points and insurance premiums of those who complete the classes.
Mr. Verret, the Improv traffic school instructor, said he had taped an Internet course for New York in anticipation. His humor-spiked online course for Florida drivers can be viewed without charge in streaming video at www.awaredriveronline.com. (Hit the “resume course” button.)
Given that this is a course on accident prevention, don’t expect comedy that kills. “You can’t just tell joke after joke,” said Mr. Verret, who oversees 15 other comics as general manager of the Improv traffic school’s Los Angeles office. Students may be less than totally attentive, no matter if the course is taught in a California hotel suite, a Florida comedy club, a Texas restaurant or a New York City storefront. At a recent accident-prevention class in Manhattan, a student began to nod off during the course, which had no final quiz or exam. (The instructor roused him.)
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- Author : arnold
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