The perils of DrivingUniversity.com
As I desperately miss my damn Defensive Driving discount and I really hate going to the def driver courses that basically involve me sitting around bored out of my mind for three or four hours while vaguely paying attention the stupid class, I emailed my insurance agent to see if any of these fancy schmancy new online classes were an acceptable replacement to the stupid class. My agent sent me a list of several choices and I went with one that looked the best designed and started the course.
As you can probably tell from the title of this little rant I picked DrivingUniversity.com, a very blue website, but one that at least looks somewhat technologically reasonable. The little tag line "Made by drivers for drivers" probably should have thrown up warning signs for me, but I plowed ahead.
One of the major reasons I wanted to take this course online was because I hate how long and boring the in class classes are. I thought that taking the course online should let me work at my own pace, that being fast, and according to the website "You can take the course at your own pace. The course is broken up into sessions and the time to take the course will vary from one person to another." As soon as I've finished the first page and ready to roar on, I notice a little timer at the bottom of the page. "That's odd," I thought, "I wouldn't think people would have to finish the page before the timer ran out. Good thing I read fast." Onwards! I click forward.
When the page reloaded, I noted quickly that it was the same fucking page, there was a lovely warning box at the top of the page telling me that the website required that I spend another 45 seconds on the page. That's right, there is a minimum amount of time I'm supposed to spend on each page because that's how long it's supposed to take me to read the page. By trying to speed up the irritating process of these stupid def driver classes, I've actually slowed back down. My hopes that this ridiculous limit of speed on this page would only be bad on the first few pages was totally dashed. I spent a minimum and a maximum of 20 seconds and well over a minute respectively of wasted time on each page.
But that's not the only punishment I receive for wanting to go fast. I'd really like to just, you know, get this stupid class over with since it's like the fifth or sixth time I've taken one of these annoying classes and I KNOW THE GODDAMN ANSWERS BY HEART. Clearly I've gotten the concept of driving defensively by now. But no! No no no. Aside from being punished for reading quickly, part of the online test is paying close enough attention to pick out details that have nothing to do with driving, such as the odd fact that honey is used in the production of golf balls and anti-freeze. Yeah, that's right, I have to pay attention to these little details, write them down, and use them to answer random quizzes that have absolutely nothing to do with driving. The best part? Sometimes the answers appear AFTER the quizzes. Oh goody.
The other details of the class layout are: read a bunch of shit, take some bullshit tests, read some ridiculous stories and answer questions about them, then play a puzzle game, repeat ad nauseum. We're up to the stories. The stories were clearly written by people who think that the people who are taking def driver courses are six years old. If the Wheel of Morality appeared in one of those stories it would not have surprised me. Reading these condescending stories made me want to punch people, and the propagandist nature of the stories was so blatant it almost made me want to become a communist. And were the final questions on these stories actually about driving? No, just stupid little details in the story that are easily forgotten. Fortunately I was wise enough to copy/paste the entire story into wordpad so I could check my answers. And, yes, if you finished their little quiz too quickly, you had to sit and wait for the website to decide you'd been done their test long enough.
Lastly, the puzzles. These were crossword puzzles in a manner of speaking, excepting that most of your time spent was waiting for their timer to run down before you input your answer. God forbid you spell an answer wrong, or you are forced to wait out the ENTIRE timer AGAIN while you spelled your answer correctly. No points for getting 95% of the letters of your answer correct.
In the end this course that I could supposedly take at my own pace, ended up taking me nearly four hours to complete, and I'd guess that nearly half that time was me waiting for timers to finish counting down. Maybe more. But no matter, the test was over, all I wanted was my stupid certificate which the website said I could print right there.
Except that, no, no I couldn't actually have the certificate. The link to the certificate is broken. My only way to get the fucking certificate is to have it faxed to me. Were any of the locations they suggested even remotely convenient to me? Of course not. Having wasted hours being punished for being able to read quickly, I sent a surprisingly polite message requesting that my certificate be faxed to my agent's office. I figured that since this company already alerts my agent upon completion of the online class, faxing the certificate to them as well wouldn't be asking much. Once again, I was wrong. Due to a mandate by the DE DMV, faxing a certificate to the very company they will be alerting so that I can have the discount is illegal. To get my certificate I have to show my ID, which certainly isn't possible at my agent's office WHERE THEY FUCKING KNOW WHO I AM.
All in all, I have to say that the online defensive driving course I took was almost as frustrating if not more so than taking the goddamn classes in person. The idea that I might not have to go anywhere was, of course, completely dashed when I had to find a place for them to fax me my goddamn certificate so I could go pick it up. When it comes time to take the course again, I may have to go take the fucking class in person because there at least I can totally ignore the class and play my DS. Should you take an online defensive driving course? I suppose that really depends on how much of a masochist you are. Or if you happen to read very slowly and live right next to a Fedex/Kinko's or UPS Store location. Otherwise I'd suggest suffering through the stupid class in person.
As you can probably tell from the title of this little rant I picked DrivingUniversity.com, a very blue website, but one that at least looks somewhat technologically reasonable. The little tag line "Made by drivers for drivers" probably should have thrown up warning signs for me, but I plowed ahead.
One of the major reasons I wanted to take this course online was because I hate how long and boring the in class classes are. I thought that taking the course online should let me work at my own pace, that being fast, and according to the website "You can take the course at your own pace. The course is broken up into sessions and the time to take the course will vary from one person to another." As soon as I've finished the first page and ready to roar on, I notice a little timer at the bottom of the page. "That's odd," I thought, "I wouldn't think people would have to finish the page before the timer ran out. Good thing I read fast." Onwards! I click forward.
When the page reloaded, I noted quickly that it was the same fucking page, there was a lovely warning box at the top of the page telling me that the website required that I spend another 45 seconds on the page. That's right, there is a minimum amount of time I'm supposed to spend on each page because that's how long it's supposed to take me to read the page. By trying to speed up the irritating process of these stupid def driver classes, I've actually slowed back down. My hopes that this ridiculous limit of speed on this page would only be bad on the first few pages was totally dashed. I spent a minimum and a maximum of 20 seconds and well over a minute respectively of wasted time on each page.
But that's not the only punishment I receive for wanting to go fast. I'd really like to just, you know, get this stupid class over with since it's like the fifth or sixth time I've taken one of these annoying classes and I KNOW THE GODDAMN ANSWERS BY HEART. Clearly I've gotten the concept of driving defensively by now. But no! No no no. Aside from being punished for reading quickly, part of the online test is paying close enough attention to pick out details that have nothing to do with driving, such as the odd fact that honey is used in the production of golf balls and anti-freeze. Yeah, that's right, I have to pay attention to these little details, write them down, and use them to answer random quizzes that have absolutely nothing to do with driving. The best part? Sometimes the answers appear AFTER the quizzes. Oh goody.
The other details of the class layout are: read a bunch of shit, take some bullshit tests, read some ridiculous stories and answer questions about them, then play a puzzle game, repeat ad nauseum. We're up to the stories. The stories were clearly written by people who think that the people who are taking def driver courses are six years old. If the Wheel of Morality appeared in one of those stories it would not have surprised me. Reading these condescending stories made me want to punch people, and the propagandist nature of the stories was so blatant it almost made me want to become a communist. And were the final questions on these stories actually about driving? No, just stupid little details in the story that are easily forgotten. Fortunately I was wise enough to copy/paste the entire story into wordpad so I could check my answers. And, yes, if you finished their little quiz too quickly, you had to sit and wait for the website to decide you'd been done their test long enough.
Lastly, the puzzles. These were crossword puzzles in a manner of speaking, excepting that most of your time spent was waiting for their timer to run down before you input your answer. God forbid you spell an answer wrong, or you are forced to wait out the ENTIRE timer AGAIN while you spelled your answer correctly. No points for getting 95% of the letters of your answer correct.
In the end this course that I could supposedly take at my own pace, ended up taking me nearly four hours to complete, and I'd guess that nearly half that time was me waiting for timers to finish counting down. Maybe more. But no matter, the test was over, all I wanted was my stupid certificate which the website said I could print right there.
Except that, no, no I couldn't actually have the certificate. The link to the certificate is broken. My only way to get the fucking certificate is to have it faxed to me. Were any of the locations they suggested even remotely convenient to me? Of course not. Having wasted hours being punished for being able to read quickly, I sent a surprisingly polite message requesting that my certificate be faxed to my agent's office. I figured that since this company already alerts my agent upon completion of the online class, faxing the certificate to them as well wouldn't be asking much. Once again, I was wrong. Due to a mandate by the DE DMV, faxing a certificate to the very company they will be alerting so that I can have the discount is illegal. To get my certificate I have to show my ID, which certainly isn't possible at my agent's office WHERE THEY FUCKING KNOW WHO I AM.
All in all, I have to say that the online defensive driving course I took was almost as frustrating if not more so than taking the goddamn classes in person. The idea that I might not have to go anywhere was, of course, completely dashed when I had to find a place for them to fax me my goddamn certificate so I could go pick it up. When it comes time to take the course again, I may have to go take the fucking class in person because there at least I can totally ignore the class and play my DS. Should you take an online defensive driving course? I suppose that really depends on how much of a masochist you are. Or if you happen to read very slowly and live right next to a Fedex/Kinko's or UPS Store location. Otherwise I'd suggest suffering through the stupid class in person.
posted by Ethyachk | 9:36 AM
3 Comments:
that's too bad... i'm looking at the website now... (4/2009) and i wonder if there's been any improvement?
also, were you able to find any other website that had better functionality?
now it's 4/2014. No change. I'll do my best to get it out of business it is so bad.
Help!! Does anyone have a good On Line Traffic Violation School to recommend?
The comments RE: DU dot com are plenty good enough to steer me clear of 'em.
I would appreciate any legit recommendation if you have one!
Thanks,
PW
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