There are a lot of things you can do online today that you used to have to do in other ways. Keeping in touch with distant friends is much easier now that you can chat with them online in text, voice, and video, and shopping for a variety of products has never been easier. You can also expand your library of videos, music, and books exponentially thanks to digital downloads and cloud storage.
Still, there are a few things you have to do in person. Not many restaurants will take digital orders and deliver a full-course dinner directly to your door, for instance, and most people still prefer to buy their fresh fruits and other products in person. And while self-driving cars are coming closer to reality every day, most Americans still need to learn how to drive if they want to get around on their own schedule. But then what if you could take an online driving course?
Today’s Traffic School
A moving violation is no joke. While different states use different systems to keep track of traffic tickets, getting more than one or two often means your license could get suspended, and it always means your insurance premiums will be going up.
Fortunately, states have several ways to forgive minor tickets. These include traffic school, which is usually a six-hour refresher course on the rules of the road. It’s boring and you probably don’t need to hear any of it, but it’s also inexpensive and lowers your insurance premiums.
It’s also improved somewhat thanks to the internet. By taking an online driving course instead of heading to a nearby school or government center, you get to take the traffic school course at your own speed and on your own time. The best online traffic schools use videos and animation to spruce up the otherwise dull material, and several of them add a touch of humor, too.
Modern Driver’s Ed
Another kind of online driving course that’s starting to pop up is driver’s ed. Driver’s ed is longer and more involved than traffic school, and it’s more important since it’s teaching new drivers, but the number of states and the number of online courses have been going up in recent years. Some online driver’s ed websites will even handle the practical lessons, too, at least depending on which state you live in.
An online driving course is especially appealing to new teen drivers since many of them work on mobile platforms. They can’t make traffic laws or defensive driving any more exciting, but they can at least make them as interesting as possible. Online driver’s ed can also allow parents to become more involved by including parent resources that can teach you how to teach your kids how to drive.
The Perks of Taking Driving Courses Online
The top reasons why taking online classes nowadays are preferable include accessibility, affordability, and several other special features that usually come along with course completion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you can also add health and safety as the main driving force why people choose online classes over traditional in-person classes.
Accessibility
Almost all online driving courses are offered 100% online (driver’s ed requires separate behind-the-wheel training and some schools combine online and in-person classes).
Online courses are also accessible using several devices – some may be limited to web browser access, but most courses are compatible with mobile devices. More modern schools even developed their own app, for example, Aceable. This means that you can access the course anywhere, and anytime you need to as long as you have access to the internet. Most courses are also self-paced.
Affordability
The usual costs that in-person classes incur happen to include textbooks, transportation or gas to travel to school and back home, allowance for food, etc. These expenses you can do without if you are taking classes online. Even the overall cost for the course itself is cheaper because, for one, classes are pre-recorded. The schools won’t have to pay instructors per class; they don’t need to pay for the space to conduct classes, either.
Special Features
Interactive course materials and a lot of visual resources help students focus on online lessons more. In addition, they’ll get to acquire freebies such as free exam preparation quizzes (for driver’s ed), insurance discounts, free processing of certificates, etc… Some schools offer free review guides, too.
The Choice Issue
So an online driving course is a pretty good idea, but there is a major problem with them: how can you tell which ones are good and which ones just have good advertising? Traffic schools and driver’s ed courses have to get certified in every state they operate in, but that only guarantees that they abide by the state’s rules and cover the required material. It doesn’t tell you whether they have 24/7 customer service, a spotless record with the Better Business Bureau, or how many people have already successfully graduated.
Fortunately, you’ve come to Traffic School Critics. We review online driving courses in order to find out just how good or bad they really are and rate them between 1-5 stars. We also award a TSC Certificate to the sites that manage to fulfill a very strict standard of quality. The material may bore us just as much as it does everyone else, but if someone visits our site and heads to a quality traffic school instead of picking one at random, then as far as we’re concerned it’s all time well spent.
There aren’t many sites out there like Traffic School Critics, but don’t think we use that as an excuse to slack off. We want our visitors to get the best experience they can out of an otherwise boring classroom experience, and so we hope you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for here at our site.