Welcome to the Comedy Defensive Driving School Blog
Twenty-two years ago I had gotten a traffic ticket and was allowed to take a defensive driving course to dismiss my ticket and keep it off my driving record. I went to a class that was held in the back of a church, taught by the preacher. I watched as everyone in the class ate, slept, read, pick their nose, shampoo their hair with Herbal Essence; in short do everything but pay attention.
It was obvious by this teacher’s lack of effort and interest from students that everyone there was just going through the motions. We sat there for 8 excruciating hours and then tore out of there having fulfilled our requirement to the court.
That class is what motivated me to start Comedy Defensive Driving School®. Take one standup comedian, add your defensive driving material; shake vigorously, and voila, you got people paying attention to the subject matter at hand!
It was two years before the State of Texas would allow me the opportunity to start teaching with a humor based curriculum. And get this! The first reservation call I received was a death threat! His message was that defensive driving was not a laughing matter.
I guess he had never driven with you people!
Here in Texas and in about eleven other states, we the people, have been given a gift to get out of a traffic ticket, keep it off our driving record and therefore not have to endure a 15% hike on our insurance premiums. Whoever fought to put these laws in place was a true champion of the people.
The mindset of the courts is to punish you by sending you to defensive driving. You’ve been deemed a bad citizen and this is their version of “doing time” on the “stretch rack”. Those of you that lived through the Spanish Inquisition know what I’m talking about!
Contrary to what the courts say, getting a traffic ticket does not make you criminal or a bad driver; it just means you were speeding and got caught. Remember this is how the state and local authorities generate a good bit of their revenue.
Every day millions of very good drivers get moving violations; it does not suddenly make them bad drivers.
No, bad drivers exist because people are allowed to forgo ongoing remedial training. Haven’t you heard? It’s too great of an inconvenience for our legislators to write commonsense laws that require the masses to take a continuing education class every couple of years to catch up on new laws and sharpen their driving skills.
You don’t believe me how stupid it has gotten out there? Arizona passed a law that only requires its citizens to renew their licenses once they reach 65 years of age years. If you’ve just turned 20 that means that you won’t have to bother with renewing your licenses again for another 40 years; just an updated photo every 12 years will do!
Instead, insurance companies are forced to raise your rates to ridicules heights so they can recoup for the multitude of fender-benders they payout. Most of which are due to inattentive drivers blabbing away on the phone in-between bites of their Big Macs and guzzles of Starbucks coffee. Why insurance companies spend millions of dollars advertising to us when what they need to be doing is forcing our legislators to require continuing education courses in driver training. Think of the money they would save if they had a 40% reduction in collisions!
Each year we lose approximately 50,000 of our mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters in car wrecks. This is the equivalent of a fully-loaded Boeing 747 crashing every day and we just shake our heads and remark how tragic or it must have been their time to go and never give another moment thought to a solution. Yet we raise all sorts of hell because 2,500 die in a war that most of America asked for; I don’t get it.
Would you knowingly get on an airplane with a pilot that got his licenses 10 years ago and never had another day of training? Well, would you? It’s the same thing with a Soccer Mom driving a 5000-pound block of metal rolling along at 70mph, while she talks on the phone and dreams of Calgon.
My point is this: I would gladly take having you in a class once every 4 years for a comprehensive training program instead of once a year for six hours on the stretch rack because you got a traffic ticket. And the great thing is the State would probably make the same amount of money!