Online, Traffic Schools Take the Easy Street

Once you have made your residence in California, how long do you have to get a driver’s license?

1) 10 days

2) 20 days

3) 30 days

4) 60 days

Hint: When you make your home here or take a job, you must get a California driver’s license within 10 days.

The preceding is an actual test question from one of the state’s hundreds of online traffic schools, where the “hint” actually supplies the answer. How easy is that?

It’s so easy that when Timbre Henning, a radio producer from Hollywood, took this online course last week to dismiss a traffic ticket she got in Beverly Hills, she was actually offended.

“It would not let you fail,” Henning said. “I’m almost annoyed by it, it is so easy.”

The burgeoning industry of Internet traffic schools caters to the thousands of drivers who want to clear their driving records of citations without sitting through an entire day of tedium in a classroom traffic school.

Wayward drivers can also satisfy traffic school requirements by renting a video or by taking a correspondence course.

But Henning is not the only one concerned that the courses have become too easy. And changes may be on the way.

Lawmakers in Sacramento are considering two bills to impose new statewide standards to weed out bogus traffic schools. Both bills would put home-study and online traffic schools under the jurisdiction of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which already oversees traffic schools held in classroom settings. The home-study schools are currently regulated by individual courthouses throughout the state.

Critics say the courts don’t have the time, inclination or ability to regulate the home-study operations.

The toughest critics of such enterprises are--you guessed it--the classroom-based traffic schools that are losing business to their online counterparts.

There are 400 licensed classroom traffic schools in the state, and about 250 home-study operations. No one tracks the number of online courses statewide. But more than 1 million Californians attend traffic school each year and, by one state estimate, nearly half of those use a home-study option.

The California Traffic School Assn., which represents about 100 classroom schools statewide, is sponsoring a bill that would impose several restrictions on home-study courses, including the same minimum requirement of 400 minutes of study already mandated in the classroom courses. That’s six hours and 40 minutes to be held captive by the fine points of parallel parking and braking distances. The bill would also require the DMV to approve lesson plans and make graduates pass an exit exam.

“The purpose of traffic school is punishment for doing something wrong,” said Gabe Robertson, a lobbyist for the association. “I challenge anyone to tell me they learned anything from doing an online program.”

Some online traffic schools agree that new standards are needed, because they say some of the courses are so easy they make a mockery of the entire business.

In fact, the Internet company https://Trafficschoolonline.com has sponsored its own bill, which would put the onus on the DMV to come up with reasonable regulations for all home-study traffic schools.

Steve Soldis, chief operating officer of https://Trafficschoolonline.com, said his company sponsored the bill to ensure that all home courses provide a legitimate curriculum.

“You can see programs that you can finish in 20 minutes and some that a chicken with a pecking order can pass,” he said.

But Soldis and other operators of online traffic schools oppose a required minimum amount of course time. Many online schools also oppose requiring that graduates travel to a DMV office or other location to take a final exam. Critics of the online schools say such exams are the only way to verify that the traffic violator has completed the course.

Online traffic schools say such requirements defeat the purpose of studying traffic safety via the Internet--which is convenience.

Robin Morante of Santee in San Diego County, a manager at a technical illustration firm, recently completed a course at https://onlinetraffic.com. He said the curriculum was challenging, but it still beat sitting through hours of instruction in a stuffy classroom.

“You need to go through a lot of material,” he said. “I found myself learning at lot.”

Henning took her online traffic course at https://eztrafficschool.com and found that there was truth in advertising. The Web site guarantees that you will pass, but the course is not approved for all courthouses, so check the site before signing up.

Participants are first required to type in some personal information, including name, address, favorite movie, favorite color and mother’s maiden name. Such information is intended to verify one’s identity. Still, it would be easy to pass the information on to a friend who owes you a favor and have the friend complete the course for you.

The curriculum is divided into 11 chapters. After each chapter there is a multiple-choice test. After you have answered the questions, you click a button to check your score. If you get them all correct, you move on to the next chapter. If not, the questions you missed reappear on the screen along with hints that could hardly be less subtle.

True or False? You may drive across a center left-turn lane.

Hint: You may drive across a left-turn lane.

This reporter completed the course--under the moniker Mickey Mouse--in about an hour. That included a coffee-and-doughnut break and time to answer a few phone calls and gossip with colleagues. There was no need to read the chapters because every missed question reappeared with the correct answer in the “hint.”

Raye Manos, secretary and treasurer of Eztrafficschool.com, defended her online course, saying it may seem easy but instills its lessons through repetition.

“If you answer a question incorrectly, we will tell you to review it,” she said.

Final question:

Are some online traffic schools too easy?

Hint: Some traffic schools are way too easy.