Traffic School

When comedian-actor Ron Green moved from Seattle to California nine years ago, he received three traffic tickets during the first month--two of them in one week. He also got a stern warning letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles: One more moving violation that year and he'd lose his driver's license. Just the thought of trying to get around Los Angeles by bus made him clean up his act. "It forced me to become the most aware driver on the planet," says the 40-year-old Green.

Kelly is 39 years old, but it had never happened before. It was, she said, her first time ever. "You were a virgin?" Seth asked, astonished. "Was he gentle? . . . Was it a good experience?" No, it wasn't, Kelly said. He wasn't gentle. He was a jerk. Kelly, it seems, will never have pleasant memories about her first moving violation. She'd been driving ticket-free more than 20 years before a highway patrolman nailed her going 80 in her Hyundai Excel.

Hillary Butorac is a traffic school pro. She's attended four times. And when she got another ticket last week for making an illegal left turn, Butorac figured she was in for another dull Saturday of driver detention. But when she went to court, the 29-year-old actor from Hancock Park got a pleasant surprise: She received the option of a take-home traffic course to complete at her own pace. "I loved the fact that I could be in my home, in my pajamas, watching the video," Butorac said.

So you just got one of those $271 tickets for driving without passengers in the car-pool lane, but you figure you'll cut your losses by going to traffic school. Guess again. Under new state budget-balancing laws that took effect Aug. 1, traffic violators must pay their tickets, plus an extra $24 administrative fee, in order to go to traffic school. And that's not counting the roughly $25 that the schools charge.

Speeders beware: Racing on the information superhighway won't be allowed at computer traffic school. That seemed to be the verdict in a downtown courtroom Thursday as judicial officials and computer technicians switched on what they say is the country's first traffic school on the Internet.

The woman who needed traffic school the most flunked before class even got under way. There was a loud knock at the door as everyone settled in for four bleak hours of instruction about bad attitude on the road. It was a Ventura cop, seeking one of the students. "Is there a problem?" asked the instructor. "Yes, there is a problem," the cop replied. The student the cop was seeking, sent to traffic school for a low-grade moving violation, had shown some difficulty in driving to traffic class.

Caught pinching a $100 pair of earrings for the first time in Orange County? The typical punishment: a day in jail, three years probation, a $150 fine and a criminal record. Commit the same crime in Los Angeles County? You could attend an eight-hour petty theft school and get the charges dropped. And in Sacramento County, keep your record clean by completing a correspondence course. Provide sex for cash in Sacramento, and go to prostitute school. In Ventura, go to jail.

Within arm's reach sits a large silver platter filled with bonbons and truffles--dark chocolate, white chocolate, double chocolate--free for the taking. Don't see anything you like? Too bad, you will have to wait until the next ice cream break. After all, this is punishment. Penance is a sweet and fattening process at the Traffic School for Chocoholics. At this school, $23 buys traffic offenders all the candy, ice cream and instruction they can consume in eight hours.

Re "Speeding Through '90s-Style Traffic School" (June 12): Mindful that the following statement might seem self-serving, as the most visible traffic school teacher in California via my TV and radio appearances, traffic school classes and mega-visited Web site, let me just say to Harry Chandler on behalf of all the drivers of California, "Yikes!" Is he more knowledgeable because of online traffic school? No. Is he more thoughtful of other drivers because of online traffic school? No. Is he less likely to not think a yellow light means "speed up" because he could get to see his basketball game sooner?