Court Traffic School Instructor’s Job Is to Drive Home His Point

For 10 years, Donald H. Andrews has had the unenviable task of trying to persuade motorists that obeying the law is the only way to drive.

“Some of these drivers get pretty spirited when I say that,” said Andrews, who conducts eight-hour-long traffic school classes on Saturdays at Harbor Municipal Court in Newport Beach. “They’re really not happy to be here, and some of them act that way. Some seem to feel they know it all already.”

But Andrews is realistic about his role.

“All of us (part-time instructors) know the reason they attend the class is to purge the citation from their driving record,” he said. “But every once in a while someone will come up to us after the class and say they’ve learned something. That makes us happy.”

He usually has 140 motorists attending each of his weekly classes.

One driver credited the class with helping him survive a serious car accident injury because he was using his seat belt, one of the points Andrews stresses.

Andrews said the majority of those attending the class, presented by the Academy for Defensive Driving, are not bad drivers but just “people who admit they got caught.” He said most are young drivers, although his students have included policemen and judges. Most are there because of speeding tickets, and everyone is charged $37.

“When you drive in Southern California,” he tells them all, “you might as well slow down, because you’re not going to get there any faster, especially on the freeway and especially if you get a ticket. Writing the ticket can take 30 minutes.”

Andrews, a welfare fraud investigator for the district attorney’s office and a one-time reserve officer who rode patrol cars, also discusses the five major causes of accidents: drunk driving, speeding, following too closely, illegal or unsafe lane changes and right-of-way violations.

The five are also the main reasons for the 6,000 citations issued monthly in Orange County, he said.

Drivers can attend a class once every two years to clear a citation.

“It’s educational, and most of the people pay attention,” Andrews said.

Drunk drivers attend a separate class.

You can buy a home telephone, so why not own the pay telephone in your restaurant or gift shop?

Pacific Bell spokesman Michael J. Runzler thinks merchants will jump at the chance to buy the pay phones, since they will also be permitted to boost the cost of the 20-cent local call to 25 cents.

He said once the phone sales program begins, the wall pay phones will be sold for about $750 and a booth could run $3,000.

“But the owner will be able to decorate them any way they see fit,” Runzler said. “If we sell a good number it will help us reduce the cost of our operation.”

He said the 18,200 outdoor pay phones in the county will continue to be operated by Pacific Bell.

Runzler said that buying the pay phone may be a bargain.

“If it’s a heavily used phone, the owner can make a lot of money,” he said. “Of course, the new owner could also lower the local call rate.”

Of course.

Gateway Videotex, a Santa Ana-based home video subscription service, held a computerized contest for a weeklong trip to Paris that required subscribers to enter by sending their names via their electronic communicator.

Robert Hall of Fullerton was the winner, but his name was picked the old-fashioned way: out of a box with hundreds of other names.

Aggressive enforcement and an educational program are credited with a more than 50% drop in arrests of Marines at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, spokesman Sgt. Louis Gutierrez said.

He said only 23 arrests were made on the base in 1985, contrasted with 50 the year before.

It’s another story off the base, he said. The drop was only 8%, from 63 to 50.

He said off and on the base, the conviction rate is nearly 100%. And besides facing steep fines in civilian courts, the Marine usually faces office restrictions as well as losing station driving privileges, forcing him to find a parking space outside the gates.

Acknowledgments--Costa Mesa businesswoman Kathryn G. Thompson, 45, was appointed by Gov. Deukmejian as a delegate to the August White House Conference on Small Business in Washington.