Last May I got a speeding ticket, 43 in a 35. I kinda sorta felt like the officer could let me slide on that one, it's not like it was a Go, Speedracer, Go kinda thing… my speed just crept up on me. Anyway, the cop wrote me a summons and the judge gave me the option of scheduling Driver Improvement School instead of being found guilty and getting the points on my ticket.

So I scheduled driver improvement class. I took the class today and I passed it. I are driver edumacated. Now I just have to remember to mail the completion certificate to the court or it will all have been for naught.

Surprisingly, I did learn several interesting things during the six hour class. Some of them were very surprising to me. For instance, did you know that one person is involved in a motor-vehicle accident every four minutes in the state of Virginia? Whew! They wouldn't tell us the guy's name, but I definitely wouldn't want to get in a car with that dude.

I've posted a list of things I learned in class below. Sometimes we got off on a few tangents, but our instructor, a very nice police sergeant, answered our questions gladly. One of the things in this list is something I faked; not really something we learned in class. The rest are all genuine facts, at least in the state of Virginia. Can you spot the fake?

The answer will be left as the first comment to this post.

Which of the following is not a genuine factoid I learned in driver improvement school?

• When riding a bicycle in public, you are subject to all of the rules of the road that apply to a motor vehicle. The only difference is the DUI laws. You can't be arrested for DUI on a bicycle.



• When a driver displaying road-rage is behind you and clearly wants you to pull over and let him or her around, it is now the law that you must pull over and let them around.



• It is illegal to blow your horn to alert someone that you're there to pick them up. You can only legally blow your horn to warn someone of danger.



• The safest day of the week to drive, statistically, is Sunday.



• There is still a law on the books in Waynesboro, Virginia, which makes it illegal for a woman to drive a car up Main Street unless her husband is walking in front of the car waving a red flag.



• When I was taught to drive, we were taught that the proper place to keep your hands on the steering wheel was in the "10 & 2" position. Nowadays, however, it is considered proper to keep your hands in the "9 & 3" position.



• It is now just as illegal to drive while fatigued or "emotionally impaired" in the state of Virginia as it is to drive while intoxicated.



• With regard to homicides, statistics show that firearms are the weapon of choice just over 50% of the time. Vehicles are the weapon of choice about 30% of the time, and the remaining approximately 20% is divided between blades, blunt instruments, poisons and everything else.



• People with little to no formal education are arrested and convicted of fewer DUI's than people with college degrees. Also, Southerners are arrested and convicted of fewer DUI's than Northerners. So, all in all, us dumb Southerners tend to get good and loaded at home. Keep it in the family and all that. ;)



• The class included discussion of several actual accounts of fatal accidents that have happened in the state of Virginia in the past ten years. I recognized one of them from the unique circumstances involved… and it was the fatal accident that killed my ex-wife's best friend.



• When telemarketers call your house to solicit money for police departments, police-related charities, sheriff's associations, etc… more than 80% of the take goes to the telemarketing agency and NOT to the charitable agency itself.



• Radar speed detector's respond to metal. In states that require cars to have both front and back license plates, most of the time it's because many modern cars have fiberglass front ends and the radar detectors rely upon the front plate to detect your speed.



• Alcohol breath testers can only pick up on the alcohol in your system. They can't pick up on any other drug. Once, a local police officer was confident that a woman he'd pulled over was very high on cocaine. He had her take an alcohol breathalyzer test, which showed no alcohol in her system. However, he lied to her and told her that the test showed no alcohol in her system, but did show a high level of cocaine. He then asked her if she'd just admit to it and turn over the rest of the cocaine. She admitted that she was on coke and handed the officer the rest of the cocaine. He then admitted to her that he'd lied about the breathalyzer, that breathalyzers can't really pick up cocaine, and he then arrested her. The moral of the story: It is illegal for us to lie to the police when they are conducting an investigation… however, the cops can lie to us all they want!



• A meth lab was recently discovered in our area in the bottom of a Salvation Army donation drop-off box, like the ones pictured here. It was highly explosive and dangerous, and could have possibly caused an injury to someone innocently dropping off a donation at the box.



• If a police officer is driving down your street and sees you mowing your grass on a riding mower and suspects that you are drunk, he can investigate... and if it turns out that you are drunk, he can arrest you for a DUI!

So which one is it? Which factoid above is fake? Check the comments to find out.