Arizona Crash Course

Photo radar doesn’t care who you are. You speed through it, and, Bam! You’re the proud recipient of a slightly blurry but [damn it!] clear enough candid portrait with a pricetag of $ 165 plus points on your license. Unless, that is… you attend traffic school. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how I found myself with 50+ other unfortunate drivers and a former adjunct professor/​wanna be stand-​up comic in a Holiday Inn conference room with a legal capacity of 35.
Having to go traffic safety school: 0 stars + the desire to re-​do my drive down Rural going the speed limit.
Getting to go to traffic safety school instead of getting points on your license: 5 stars.
Instructor who tries his darndest to make it interesting: 5 stars.
Online registration at
was easy, there were several open classes before my court date, and when I showed up they had me on their list. The instructor genuinely tried to entertain and enlighten us with his endless supply of anecdotes, illustrations, and attempts to toss the used illustrations in the garbage can, without ever actually making a basket. People: If you love to entertain but can’t seem to find a captive audience, consider applying to teach traffic school.
I attended the course in Chandler at the Holiday Inn Express at the I-​10 and Chandler Blvd. WIth one individual bathroom for men and one for women, a broken vending machine, and serious over-​crowding in the ‘classroom’ there is some room for improvement in terms of the accommodations. But — isn’t there always a silver lining? — when I asked the front desk about the broken vending machine, I was told I could partake of the free continental breakfast and sampled a suprisingly delicious cinnamon roll from under a heat lamp. That s*** was good.
All in all I recommend this course to whoever needs it. It’s not so bad…

Whoo hoo. I guess you can guess how I spent my Saturday. In Chandler you don’t really have an option of taking DD online. You have to actually appear before the judge and plea your case.
As far as DD goes, this one wasn’t that bad, for what it was. Lt. Mike Burns was my instructor and he was very interesting and ran a tight ship.
My class was in the community room at Chandler Fashion Center. The class started at 7:45 and the air didn’t kick in until 8:30 and one wall was on the other side of Paradise Bakery. And the music in their kitchen was really loud and someone in there was just singin their heart off. It was distracting and funny at the same time.