A few weeks ago I was involved in an accident. I was behind a pickup truck, the rest of the group of cars pulled away from the stop light and so did I, but not the fellow in the pickup truck directly in front of me. I essentially rammed (3 mph ram?) into his rear bumper doing about $1700 worth of damage to my car. I of course was in the wrong and got a citation for my actions. The cost of the ticket was about $140 dollars. The deductible on my car was $500. The rental car I had was about $100 because I had taken extended insurance out on it just in case.

I was prepared for the ramifications of my actions and the two points on my driving record until I got a letter from the Michigan Secretary of States office (our DMV) stating that if I took and passed a “Basic Driver Education Program” that Michigan would effectively forget these two points existed, that my insurance company would never be notified, and the only mark on my record would be a line item for the infraction itself, but nothing more, and only visible to law enforcement. There was a menu of offers, most of them were $99 or higher and required a weekend someplace annoying like Houghton (insofar as it’s far away, I’ve never been to Houghton so I don’t know if it’s truly annoying or not) but there was one outfit called “I Drive Safely” that offered a $40 online course. I’ve been taking this course on-and-off for the past week. It was eight sections and covered things I already knew, but at least now I’ve kind of proven to the state that I know these things. So this morning I passed with flying colors (as I assumed I would) and I no longer have this rather lightweight cloud covering my life.

So ends this rather annoying chapter of my life, and I can move on. I’m very thankful that the state allows online courses as they are the most convenient. My results are going to be sent to the DMV today, so that concludes those two points and I can just be done with this entire affair and move on.