A Funny Thing Happened in Traffic School

It was a gorgeous Saturday morning, the start of a day made for sleeping late and having fun. But crammed into four rows of brown metal chairs in a windowless room above a Studio City bowling alley were three dozen sleepy-eyed people paying penance for driving misdeeds.

They were taking the legal option that offers motorists the opportunity to erase a ticket from their record by attending traffic school.

But it was not the usual kind of traffic school.

When the teacher walked into the room, he was groaning and babbling like a mad scientist from a monster movie.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” said Kevin Carr, 29, sketching out his qualifications, which include experience in improvisational comedy, theater and movies as well as teaching. “But enough about me,” he concluded. “Let’s talk about you.

“What do you think of me?”

Comedy Sweetens Safety

Carr is one of the unusual breed of teachers working for Lettuce Amuse U-Laff ‘N Learn Terrific School, where the safety curriculum is sweetened with comedy.

Until early 1985, the 5-year-old San Gabriel-based school operated under the more-conventional name of “West Coast Driving School.” Classes were taught by the usual instructors, including many moonlighting police officers. And students voiced the usual complaints about suffering through long, boring classes, said Linda Regan, who owns the school with her husband, Ray.

Then one day, Linda Regan noticed that teachers with a good sense of humor drew the most favorable comments on evaluation forms. She told her husband they should hire professional comedians. Inspiration for the school’s goofy name came to her in the middle of the night, and she woke her husband to tell him, she said.

Business Increased 25%

“Ray thought I was crazy in the beginning,” Linda Regan said, laughing. “But we put an ad in Variety and started advertising for comedians.”

Ray Regan decided his wife wasn’t crazy when the school’s business increased by more than 25%, she said. As a consequence, the school is growing. With schools in the Los Angeles, Orange County, Fresno and San Bernardino areas, it will expand to the San Francisco Bay and San Diego areas.

Not all concerned with the school are amused.

The Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees the state’s 350 traffic schools, was “not thrilled” with the pun-filled name and humorous approach, said Mario Balbiani, manager of the DMV’s Traffic Violators School program.

“I don’t think that’s what we had in mind when traffic schools were created,” he said. “We get thousands of people killed on streets and highways yearly. Hopefully traffic school is one way of alleviating it. It’s a serious matter.”

But, Balbiani said, as long as the schools meet state curriculum requirements, the DMV has no authority to stop them from using such techniques. Other schools in the highly competitive industry have offered free lottery tickets or held classes in fine restaurants to attract students.

The DMV has monitored the Lettuce Amuse U school and the program “is as good as anybody’s,” he said.

The school now conducts 81 classes a month in Los Angeles County at $25 per student for each class session and employs about two dozen comedians, who are paid about $100 per class, Linda Regan said.

At the Studio City session, Carr asked students to describe the traffic violation that sent them to the school.

“My ticket says failure to stop for a pedestrian,” said Roxanna Auer, 36, of Beverly Hills, a real estate saleswoman.

“I failed to see the pedestrian,” she said, “but it’s OK, because I had done at least six things that day I should have gotten a ticket for.” This is where Carr uses his improvisational comedy background.

‘Those Darned Pedestrians’

“Well those darned pedestrians. It is illegal to mow down pedestrians in California , “ Carr deadpanned. “In some states, there’s a bounty on them. In New York, you hit three and get a toaster oven.”

The class roared.

“I went 65 on the freeway. Guilty as hell,” admitted a bearded man in the back row. He said he was late for a basketball game when a California Highway Patrol officer stopped him on the Long Beach Freeway.

“And you didn’t tell the officer that?” Carr asked, contorting his face and gesturing wildly with his hands, pretending to be the CHP officer: “Oh, I’m sorry sir. A basketball game! Let me tear that ticket up.”

Carr defends teaching safety with jokes.

“I think people learn more,” he said. “You absorb information better when you’re not nodding off, spending your time thinking about what you’re going to do when you get out of there, or writing letters.”

No Off-Color Jokes

“Learning doesn’t have to be dull,” Linda Regan said. Many of the comedians and actors hired by the school have teaching experience too, she said, and all teachers go through a training program required by the DMV. They are instructed to avoid off-color jokes and ethnic humor.

Linda Regan cited comments gleaned from several evaluation forms after a recent course held in the San Gabriel Valley. One woman wrote that she planned to wear her seat belt as a result of the class, and would urge her teen-age children to do the same.

“I get off on the fact that I might have saved somebody’s life by now,” said Steve Verret of North Hollywood, the teacher of that San Gabriel class.

“I make them laugh but I do get serious when I talk about alcohol and drugs and when I talk about seat belts. And it apparently sticks because, when they leave the class, about 70% to 80% of the class tell me on their comment sheets that they’re going to wear their seat belts and they’re not going to drink and drive anymore.”

Added Opportunity

Verret, who performs Friday nights at a Sherman Oaks improvisational comedy club, the L.A. Connection, supplements his income by teaching half a dozen traffic classes every month. He said the classes have potential career benefits for him because agents, producers and casting directors get traffic tickets, too.

“I had two producers in my class last night. They both asked me for resumes and pictures . . . and they said they were going to try to do something for me.”

Chuck Lindlsy, an actor and improvisational comic who attended Carr’s Saturday class because he hopes to begin teaching similar classes soon, said he wants the traffic school teaching job to pay for a Porsche he plans to buy.

The captive audience is also a good place to hone a comedian’s skills, said Carr, a part-time actor who has taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District and a private school for students with dyslexia.

Class Joins In

He also has theater experience in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. He has performed at local clubs including The Improv, worked with the Groundlings and Second City improvisational comedy troupes and had small parts in the movies “Desperately Seeking Susan” and “To Be or Not To Be.”

Carr took the teaching job about nine months ago, after hearing about it from a friend, and teaches about one class a week. Carr mixes jokes with serious instruction on traffic safety, driving skills and the law.

“Is it OK to drive in the car-pool lane if you’re schizophrenic?” asked a man from the back row.

“Only if all your personalities are in the car,” Carr responded. “You have to introduce them all to the officer.”

Good Spirits

Turning serious, Carr asked, “What happens when four cars get to an intersection at the same time?”

“An accident,” someone cracked.

“Who gets the right of way?” Carr persisted.

“The ambulance,” someone replied.

“The car without insurance,” someone else said.

Eventually an acceptable answer emerged.

By the morning break, nearly two hours later, the class was in good spirits.

“He’s very good. It’s very entertaining,” said Ken Paulen, a 45-year-old film editor who had been ticketed for making an unsafe lane change. “It’s like a sugar-coated pill,” said Peter Loncton, 37, of Studio City, sales manager for a film equipment company.

But Linda Regan was most pleased--although the DMV probably would not be--by the comment written by a woman who attended one of Verret’s recent classes:

“I can hardly wait to come to traffic school again.”