(STICKY) My story

Alright. Here's what happened...

On Sunday, September 7 of this year (2008), I was driving Northbound on Rural Road in beautiful Tempe, Arizona, in a rented Nissan Titan pickup truck, on my way to the In-N-Out Burger for a delicious, nutritious Double-Double Animal style. Little did I know at the time that that would become one EXPENSIVE burger.

WHen I reached the 200 S. block of Rural Road, my picture was snapped by a "Robo-Cop". Apparently I was traveling at 46 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.

On October 8, I received a letter from the National Rent-A-Car "Citations Department" stating that I had received a moving violation on September 7 (one month prior!) and that, for my convenience, they charged me $15 to rat me out to the authorities. That really pissed me off. Not so much that I had gotten a ticket (it had been about 13 years and I was about due for one). Not so much that National ratted me out and charged me $15 for the honor. What pissed me off is it took me ONE MONTH to find out about it.

So I contacted the court to try to see what I needed to do to get this taken care of. Apparantly, nothing. Not until they "officially" put the ticket in my name and I received it in the mail. So I had to wait SOME MORE.

Finally, on Saturday, October 25 I received it.

Luckily I could make it go away. I could take Defensive Driving school. Not an inequitable trade, I suppose. I could take it online, right? NOT. Tempe Municipal Court is one of the few Arizona courts that won't recognize an online course. I did get lucky though. I could take 6 hours of traffic school here in Texas and send the certificate to an Arizona driving school, pay them $133 and they would give me an Arizona certificate and clear things up with the court.

The best part? 90% of Texas traffic schools are taught by professional comedians. I'm not joking. What you saw on that episode of "King of the Hill" was true. I'm kind of looking forward to that. On top of that, my insurance company offers an 8% discount for taking traffic school and you can do that once every 3 years for the discount.

Furthermore, in Arizona, you can get out of one basic (non-serious) moving violation every two years if you take traffic school prior to your court date. In Texas, you can get out of one non-serious moving violation PER YEAR. That's right-get pulled over for speeding once a year, pay for traffic school ($40), pay a court fee (which, plus the school fee almost is like paying for the ticket) and get NO POINTS on your license. Ain't Texas great?