It’s worth a nickel
getting defensive
last month i took a defensive driving class. it’s one of those things sponsored by the national safety council, that lets you save a boatload of money on your car insurance (without even switching to geico, who in the interest of full disclosure, is my insurance carrier). anyway, the class cost me about $40, but the discount on my insurance is good for three years, which ends up saving me about $300 even after the cost of the class is factored in.
i took the class once before, three years ago, at a local community college. even though it’s a horribly boring way to spend six hours of your weekend, it does have its benefits. (see paragraph one.) this time, to save a few dollars, i took it at a local driving school, which shall remain nameless.
i’d like to share with you what i learned during my class, from my amazing instructor.
- don’t go to the mall at christmas time. it’s just too risky. there are guys with box cutters waiting under your cars to slash your ankles and (1) steal your car, (2) steal whatever you just bought, (3) rape, molest or otherwise assault you, (4) kill you, or (5) any combination of the previous four.
- you should check under your car every day for leaks. (and, i guess, for people with box cutters.) this helps to prevent larger problems. no word from the instructor on what to do if you find any leaks, but definitely look for them.
- jayne mansfield was decapitated because she was “drafting” behind a truck. that’s why the bars are on the back of semis now, to prevent this from happening. hmmm. in fact, she wasn’t. either. decapitated or drafting. she wasn’t even driving during the car accident that took her life.
- right on red is a tragedy from a safety standpoint, and jimmy carter is to blame. wrong again, it seems. right on red has been in use in many us states since the 1950s (according to wikipedia), and when instituted in the 1970s during the oil crisis, it was done by states rather than by president carter. interestingly, wikipedia also would seem to differ with the national safety council on the relative impact of the laws, since they apparently account for a very small number of accidents annually. hmmm.
- in new jersey, it is illegal to park under bridges. i didn’t bother to look this up, since i couldn’t figure out why people would park their cars in the water anyway.
- you can make liquor from aftershave. apparently by pouring aqua velva through a loaf of italian bread, you end up with some kind of drinkable alcohol. also, for those linguists among us, “aqua velva” apparently means “velvet water” in spanish. okay, i would have said “agua aterciopelada” or even “agua suave”, but what do i know.
- the national safety council considers prayer to be an important component of correcting and surviving from hydroplaning. they just don’t print that in their course manual, but seriously folks, pray, okay?
- don’t use antifreeze as windshield washer fluid. apparently it’s too viscous.
- you can’t break a car window with a hammer. really? i find this hard to believe. i understand that it’s difficult (tempered glass and all), but eventually it’s going to break. my instructor must get a kickback from the folks at lifehammer.
- it’s okay to ride a motorcycle, as long as it’s a harley. everything else is just a “crotch rocket“, and we shouldn’t even be importing them from korea anyway. (note that we also import these from japan and italy, but why worry about accuracy at this point?)
- dangerous moose are roaming around greenwich, connecticut. i seriously wouldn’t have believed it without reading it online. just for the record though, the accident occurred in new canaan, not greenwich.
- don’t pay for air! if you go to a gas station to fill your tires with air, and they charge for their air, you get the hell out of that gas station as fast as you can. go to a free one. most of them don’t even work anyway, so don’t bother with the ones that charge. don’t pay for air! don’t!
- with sinkholes in florida, earthquakes in california, and bridges collapsing in minnesota … for the love of god, just stay home!
5 Responses to getting defensive
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For the record, I took the same course with the same instructor and I much more greatly appreciated the humor and sarcasm that the instructor added to the class as opposed to taking a dry, “let’s all read from the book” type class probably taught at DCC.
But the instructor did teach me how to properly use my ABS, how to adjust my mirrors properly, correctly how to steer in the event my car starts sliding, the DWI/DWAI laws of NYS, as well as many other Defensive Driving tools. With my class, the 13 points you mentioned were all little side notes in-between the important stuff to make people get a laugh. The only reason people take DD classes is for the points reduction or insurance reuduction, so why not add a little personality and fun to the class?! I really think you’re being a bit harsh and overdramatic here, but we’re all entitled to our opinions.
Also, you can’t break a car window with a hammer. At least not the front windshield, and I’m sure that’s what he was talking about. Being a former volunteer firefighter (the instructor is one too, btw), there isn’t a device available to easily break a windshield. There are layers of plastic between the glass to both a) prevent you from going through the windshield in an accident and b) to protect you from flying debris outside of your car. Try taking a sledgehemmer to your front windshield if you ever desire. It will take quite some time to break all the way through. I know from experience. I’ve done it with cars we’ve performed drills on. The lifehammer you mentioned says “Breaks car side windows” and notes “This tool will not break windshields or windows made of laminated glass.”
7 is my favorite. Aren’t you thankful you learned so very much in this course?
for the record, i totally agree with jimmy on a couple of points. first, he did take the same course with the same instructor … but on a different day. second, we’re all entitled to our opinions, which is what makes blogging so much fun.
i didn’t learn anything about abs, or adjusting my mirrors. i didn’t learn anything about dwi or dwai, or how to steer in the event of a slide, because the content of those areas wasn’t new to me. so i’m not suggesting it wasn’t there, just that it wasn’t memorable or noteworthy or new.
but to the most important point, allow me to clarify: i am most definitely not referring to breaking a windshield with a hammer. i did a lot of reading on tempered glass and laminated glass before i “argued” with the instructor on this one. jimmy is absolutely right — you can spend all day hitting your windshield with a hammer, and at most you might get some cracking, but it will not break. that’s because it is laminated glass, which as jimmy says, has a layer of plastic in between layers of glass. my post refers to breaking a side window (in the instructor’s example, to escape a submerging or submerged vehicle). and i stand by my opinion … that with a normal hammer, i’m going to be able to break it eventually, because it’s only tempered, rather than laminated. so thanks to jimmy for raising that point and encouraging me to be more clear.
and just so that nobody thinks i’m all by the book, with no room for fun … that’s not it. i’m all for adding a little personality to the class. but when someone is in a position of authority and responsibility, i’d like there to be accurate and truthful information presented, and i don’t think this instructor met the bar.
for my money, next time i’ll go back to dcc.
Hmm, though I don’t know this for a fact, but if a vehicle was submerged in water and you were inside of it, I would venture to guess that breaking the window, no matter what you had would be extremely difficult. You would not have the force nor the leverage to swing a hammer as if you weren’t submerged. Breaking a car’s side window is not easy either. It’s a lot easier than a windshield, but it’s not as easy as say breaking a window in your home.
Hi! I read your blogs.
I was ordered to take a probational driving course for some BS traffic stop when I was 17. (Since we’re doing the full disclosure thing, the officer alleged I had passed a stopped schoolbus; I discovered later he had stopped me because of my bumper stickers, because there aren’t better things to do in Bloomingdale.) I can surmise with certainty that everyone there except me and the instructor got their licenses out of a cracker jack box. I was probably the only person who wasn’t there for vehicular homicide or having 14 metric tons of crack spoons in my trunk.
I spent the entire time learning that there are (are you sitting down?) a whopping three colors on a traffic light, what an amber light signifies, then watching a video on what an amber light signifies (yes, there really are entire videos dedicated to the ever-compelling subject of traffic lights), and, all the while, a non-English-speaking Asian woman was pushing a notebook toward me and insistently shaking a pen in my face, despite my polite refusals to take notes for her. By the time I emerged, though, I had successfully lost the two points on my license…. and all will to live.