Defensive Driving...Me? Who's Defensive?

Regular readers will remember I had a bit o' a car crash back in January...uh, make that a complete destruction of my car. No injuries, thank God, so we replaced the car and went on about our business....except for this little court-imposed requirement called Defensive Driving School.

To avoid getting any points on my license (and paying way more in insurance fees), I signed up for a one-day driving school course. Yep, me and about 20 speed-freak teenage boys sat in a claustrophobic little room for six hours on the first really nice spring day of the whole flippin' year and re-learned how to drive, courtesy of a lovely 8-part video program from AAA. Sigh.

I have to admit I went in with a really bad attitude (oh, like you wouldn't!), but I seriously ended up learning some interesting tidbits from a well-designed AAA program. For instance:

• Did you know that in the first year after Canada enacted its mandatory headlights on at all times law (OK, so I don't know the actual name of the law, but you get the picture), frontal crash fatalities went down by 28 percent?
• The correct way to position your car's side mirrors is to sit in the driver's seat and rest your head on the driver's side window, then adjust the left mirror so that you just see the teeniest little bit of your car. For the right mirror, lean over so your head is in line with the rear view mirror and do the same adjustment. Once you've adjusted the mirrors this way, it takes a bit of getting used to (you'll think the mirrors are way out of whack at first), but then you'll realize how much more of the area around you is visible with properly adjusted mirrors.
• A first-time DWI offense in St. Louis County will cost you between $3,000-$5,000 in legal fees, court costs, etc. If the whole "Maybe I shouldn't drive and put myself and others in imminent danger of dying" doesn't stop you from driving drunk, the potential of draining your bank account by five grand might.
• And finally, if you're clocked at 105 MPH on Manchester Road, you're going to be sitting through multiple Saturday Defensive Driving School classes (that last bit of info courtesy of one of my testosterone-laden classmates).

Seriously, though, I'll definitely be putting the Princesses through the AAA new driver program before they get behind the wheel of their Glass Coaches. Of course, I'm guessing by then gas will be about $20/gallon, so they might be taking the AAA Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy Program, but I think they'll look really cute in those little bonnets.:-P